Barry A&P wrote:

I recently viewed a post that said "autonumber is fine as long as you dont
display it to the user..." Everything in my database references
autonumbers!! did i make a big mistake somewhere?? i am even marking
parts with ID numbers that are generated by the autonumber field on a few
of my tables...

Should i be worried??

Do i need to seriously look into a new approach??

any comments are greatly appreciated..

In my opinion "never expose AutoNumbers to users" is vastly overstated. It
is based on an assumption that users will make assumptions that might
confuse them (like the values should not have gaps).

Well, amongst users the stupid ones will make assumptions that confuse them
about LOTS of things. The smart ones not so much. Many situations will
never expose a long continuous block of records to a user at one time where
an assumption about gaps comes into play anyway.

There are cases where the "business rules" dictate no gaps. In those cases
avoid AutoNumbers. There is little reason to avoid them (and show them to
users) when business rules don't care.