James,

>Actually, there is another solution. The user can generate offline keys using integers, and when going back on line, the application database can return a header portion of the key (or session portion). With this scenario, the client application controls part of the key and database controls the other.
>
>Header: 123 + Client:124578 = 123124578 !

Though, this might work, it is not very easy to implement it this way. You'll also have the problem that you've splitted the key into two counters: one session counter and one autonumberbering part and the cances you're running out of surrogates are higher.

When replicating from one server to another (or more) and vise versa, this practise is probably going to be a nightmare, because the enumerating the sessionnumber is a distributed process also.

Walter,