Thank you all for your answers, I do use a key generating function, basically for every table, the key is a character string, I think it's easier to manipulate them in relations and that sort of thing.

I also use table buffering and an error handler to take care of conflicts, the key generation part has worked well so far.

**** Actual question here

Basically I was trying to decide if I should stick to this double Id thing, mine and the user's, or should I go with the user's input, and validate it on creation, then use RI rules to handle changes.


So far I've stayed away from RI rules, when I began programming in VFP I thought it could really slow things down if you change a part number, to go and update possibly thousands of records that contain the old value, I hadn't tried it though. The unique Id allows me to stay clear of this.

My key generation program is also called newid(), a friend pased it to me, and I know he got it from someone else :), I've made some changes to it, among them, I took it out of the DBC procedures into it's own prg.

Apparently the system assigned unique ID thing is the way to go.

Thanx