This is what I hear you saying:

1. "Experts" have advised not to use native keys
2. You, or someone on the project before you, used native keys
3. Now native keys are causing a problem
4. The "experts" tell you you should not have used native keys.

Sorry, I just don't see how you can get ticked off at the experts. There are a number of people on here who's advice is almost as good as gold. Anything Ed Rauh writes is my religion. < g >

If they tell me it's bad design, I don't take it as gospell, but pretty darn close. And I don't take it personally.

But if I don't take their advice, I don't ask them to fix it when I run into trouble.

>Hey guys,
>
>Pardon me for jumping in, but Walter perfectly crystallized my main gripe about what might be considered 'elitism' on the UT (I snipped most everything else because I think both sides of the argument have valid points...).
>
>Walter wrote:
>
>>Yep, I agree. It becomes worse if this is not recognized as 'Hey, there are others who have another opinion, which I should pass to people who ask questions about this topic'. It really hurts to see that when someone asks how to overcome the "Uniqueness of PK violated" errormessage, it is only answered by "Don't reuse primarykeys. Use generated PKs". I don't have to point out that
>this has occured frequently by people who should know better.
>
>This is what gets my goat as well. I can't even recall all the times I have asked a question on the UT only to have it answered "that is bad design", or, "that is not the right way..." The way I do things was never up for negotiation (unless I explicitly want help in that arena). I am an excellent programmer. If I end up being pushed into a certain way of doing things because of user requirements, hardware limitations, or any other reason out of about a million, I don't want an answer to my question taking the form of saying I should totally change the way I am doing something. Really, look at any thread about scrollable forms and I can almost guarantee you that at least one person, without answering the question at all, will say something like "you shouldn't use scrollable forms". I have been frequenting the UT for something a bit over two years I would say...
>
>To be honest, more often than not when I post questions on UT I get no answer, a non-answer, or suggestions on how to change things totally. Now, mostly this is because I rarely place questions on the UT because the search archives answer my question before that becomes necessary (so the ones I do post can be fairly convoluted). But in the cases where I really need help, and the only help offered is a criticism of my methodology, it is annoying to say the least. That's why I personally would never spend any amount of money (no matter how small) to have a Premier membership. [Boy, I am definitely ranting now...]
>
>I am not saying that UT is the only forum to fall prey to this type of "support", but I have actually gotten more answers (and good ones) from the USENET newsgroups than I have from posting on UT. A lot of folks frequent both arenas, but while the USENET tone seems to be "answer the question regardless of what it is, and if the person asks design questions later, then go there as well", the UT tone comes off as "we will answer the question, but only if the methodology sounds good first". I would rather have the former, because I know what I am doing, and because I know what I am doing, the latter can be very abrasive.
>
>OK, I have written waaaayyy too much. This was not intended to be directed at anyone or anything, and it is all simple opinion.
>
>And, I am open to discussion. *smile*
>
>JoeK