Why would you EVER care what id ms-access uses for the relation?
Ask if your boos chars what memory segment word gets loaded into? Do you
care if it is memory segment 32, or 8192?
Who cares about a number you, and your users will NEVER see?
An autonumber is some mechanistic to generate a number. To you and me, all
we care about is that we have a relation from customers to customers invoice
table. Do we really care, or have to know what number is used?
Really, when word loads into memory, we don't care about the number used for
the memory location. Really, when ms-access has a relation between customers
and the invoice file...again we don't give a hoot about what number is used.
Me, or you never sees the segment number when word loads, and we as users
will never see the autonumber either.
These numbers are NOT for humans to see.....
If you folks are letting users see, or use those autonumbers...then your
boss is 100% correct!
However, the real wrong being done here is that users can see, or use the
autonumbers. I mean, do you want ms-word to start showing you the memory
segment numbers it uses to load a document into memory? It would be crazy to
force users to deal with memory segment numbers when using word.
With ms-access, YOU NOW are the software developer. So, just like those
developers who creased word, they don't show users what memory location the
documents load into. You as a developer has a responsibly to NOT LET USERS
see the autonumber.
If you need some number for your users, then you need to write your own
custom code that generates those numbers for human consumption (say, things
like invoice number etc.). You do NOT want to use the invoice number for
relations etc (you still use a internal autonumber, and that way you don't
even care if the invoice has a invoice number, or perhaps you wait a
specified time until a invoice number is given. Either way, you can still
have your relational database function...but behind the scenes it is using a
autonumber).
Your boss should have NEVER seen a autonumbet at all......
You mistake here is to try and let humans see, or even refer to, or use the
autonumber in any way. Autonumbers are NOT to be given meaning by
humans...but ONLY to your software.
