Autonumber (Access 97)

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Why is it not a good idea to use Autonumber as a Primary Key?

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Huh?

It is an excellent idea to use an AutoNumber field as primary key. One advantage is that it can’t be modified by the user, another that is is guaranteed to be unique (there were some issues with this in early versions of Access 2000, I think, but not in Access 97 as far as I know).

One thing to keep in mind is that an AutoNumber field is essentially a meaningless number. Preferably, it should be hidden from the end user. For the developer, it is a convenient way to create a unique identifier for a record, and as such a natural candidate to be the primary key.

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