Re: Performance implications of creating many, many sequences

On Oct 22, 2010, at 2:50 PM, Rob Sargent wrote:

> Is this "invoice_number" just an id or what might appear an a bill (in
> some pretty form etc)?

It will appear on actual invoices, as part of a compound invoice identifier (like ABCD-0042, where ABCD is an identifier for the account in question and 42 is the invoice number).

> If the former, just get a unique id over all invoices. At the very
> least it will save time i) in writing where clauses ii) re-creating the
> correct id once some one assigns an invoice to the wrong customer.

There will be such an ID, but I do not want to show it directly to users. I want an invoice number independent of whatever surrogate key the database happens to use to uniquely identify rows.

(Sorry if you receive this twice, Rob. I accidentally replied to you instead of the list the first time.)