>>I have a large table. It is indexed with a primary key. The table holds the current location of an engineering drawing in the sign-off cycle. I have a form that points to this table and gives the user the location info. At some point in a given time period the drawing can be released and the next revision level can be issued. My problem comes in when I try to put a new record with a drawing number that already exists. I mark the old record for delete but a pack is not possible until all the users log off. Even though the old record is marked for delete I still get a violation error. Thanks.
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>>God Bless,
>>S. Dyke
>
>By definition, primary keys are never reused. I recommend surrogate keys. There is a more complete discussion in the KB article on my web site.

This might be simplistic & I'm probably missing some important point, but rather than add a new record & delete the original - could you not simply overwrite the original. That way the primary key remains unchanged & there's no need for surrogate keys.

Please let me know why this idea is wrong - I profess to being a beginner at this & need to learn.

Paul.