>>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.

Thanks, Dragan. I'm always interested in how other companies/countries handle the same business problems.

Barbara