HI Nadya

How about

BINTOC(RAND(-1)*2^31-1)+RIGHT(BINTOC(RAND()*2^16),2)

This take full advantage of the 6 bytes of the character field. However because of code pages, it might be wise to change the field to Character (binary). Of course there is a chance that the algorithm will create duplicate keys, so to be sure, you'll have to take care of such an event.

Walter,


>Hi everybody,
>
>I have a table, there field Code (Character 6) is made PK. This table contains one blank record (this is by design). Now, each time I'm issuing append blank, I get an Error "Uniqueness of indexes is violated". I'm thinking about adding a default value for this field, but I don't want to use NextID table approach, because this database doen't have a NextID table and I don't want to change it.
>Therefore I'm seeking for the idea of a function, which will generate Unique ID automatically (Char 6).
>
>Or may be you have other ideas? Simple way, which was suggested by my manager, just make this index to be regular and deal this checking on the form level. I disagree, because our data is not secure enough, so if somebody will edit this table directly, there is a chance for adding duplicates.
>
>What do you think? I know, it's not recommended to use character PK (meangful), but this table was designed long time ago and I don't want to change it.
>
>Thanks in advance.