Integrity - SQL vs Indexes vs Stored Procedures.

I am interested in opinions from this group on the following issue: I am building a DB backend for some imported reports (coming from excel, word and other places). The backend is Oracle 8.1.5.

Since these reports were designed by non-programming professionals there is no unique id. I am importing (from CSV) into a table and herein lies the catch. I need to make sure that the table doesn't get imported twice.

I know that I can create an index of a bunch of columns and hope that they are unique (fairly easy actually), but theoretically indexes shouldn't really be used to enforce these rules. Anybody have a similar situation? I guess I could use a trigger and populate an extra field and then make that unique.

I have a little time (unlike most projects lately) so I would rather do it right!

TIA. Received on Tue Feb 08 2000 - 00:00:00 CET