>The invoice # problem is separate from the surrogate key, in that you can >always have a 'Void' entry for any 'spoiled' invoice, or you can re-use the >number later if one was added and then deleted. > >Of course, this MAY depend on the tax-collectors. Dragan's could be >nastier than ours :-( > >Barbara Don't know how nasty your ones are, but it's rather a political issue here - small business is the base of tomorrow's middle class which could finance the change of power here someday, so the financial police is summoned to cut it to pieces ASAP, so their papers must comply to the most unimaginable requests, and our programs must supply the papers :(. So, the invoices we print must be flawless. So far, the invoice numbers were given by hand of the user, so it didn't matter much (the control was manual), and the situations where we had mass invoicing were in the state companies, who are hardly controlled at all. Now, some of the small business is getting just big enough to have the invoice sequence number nearly impossible to track by hand, to be a desirable target by the financial police, and to need networked invoicing - so, I'm just getting ready for the problem before it occurs :) If you're curious to know the political details, I don't mind if Bret hands you what I have already written about it (or any other stuff along with it) - it's up to him.