Re: HELP: How to generate sequential Primary Keys on a master-detail form?

"Frank" <fbortel_at_home.nl> wrote in message news:3CB06FE6.9020405_at_home.nl...
> Thomas Kyte wrote:
> > I agree with the "rubbish" part however -- the rubbish part is the
supposed
> > technical need for gap free sequential numbers which seems to be a hold
over
> > from the days when you had a 100% paper based system and a person
physically
> > assigned document numbers or such one a time. gap free sequential
numbers just
> > *don't scale* -- the imply and enforce serialization.
> But some (financial/tax) systems *require* gap-free sequences!

true. Some systems also *require* meaningful primary key values to be generated on a coded basis (eg A001 is the first customer whose name starts with A). It doesn't however mean the reasons for the requirement hold water. The audit requirement on business for which gap free sequence numbers are proposed as a solution is 'can you prove that you have recorded all financial transactions'. gap free sequence numbers don't prove this: business processes and audit on the basis of statistical sampling does this. As Tom says gap free means serialized transactions. I prefer to think of this as a designed in bottleneck.

--
Niall Litchfield
Oracle DBA
Audit Commission UK