Hi Jim, Please could you explain me how u arrived the figure 2,000,000,000. For surrogate PK, I usually take the recc() and add 1 to it then, convert it to the base 36 and store. I do this by giving Default Value of PK as Base36( recc()+1 ). Where Base36 is an UDF which converts decimal to base 32. Is there a better way of doing this? TIA, Biju > The enforcement of PK and Candidate indexes is according to the rules of > relational databases. The rules state that a Primary or candidate key is > absolutely Unique within the table. Set deleted on does NOT remove the > record from the table, the record is still there and still has that key, > and the record could be recalled in the future So the behavior you see is > the only way it could ever work. > > To solve the perceived problem with this, use surrogate keys so you don't > care what the value is as long as it is unique. Don't ever reuse a key. > If you use Integer field for this you are limited to only 2,000,000,000 > positive values stored in 4 bytes.