8-byte value as primary key?

[Guest]

Hi.

A colleague of mine is trying to use an eight-byte array as the primary key into an ADO.NET DataTable, but he's getting exceptions thrown when he attempts to set the appropriate column as the primary key. Here's his sample:

Code:
public static void ByteArrayKey () {
DataTable dt = new DataTable();
dt.Columns.Add (new DataColumn("bytes",typeof(System.Byte[])));

DataRow dr = dt.NewRow();
dr["bytes"] = new System.Byte[] {0,1};
dt.Rows.Add(dr);
dr = dt.NewRow();
dr["bytes"] = new System.Byte[] {1,0};
dt.Rows.Add(dr);
try {
dt.PrimaryKey = new DataColumn[]{dt.Columns[0]};
System.Console.WriteLine("Set primaryKey as byte array");
} catch (System.ArgumentException e) {
System.Console.WriteLine("Could not set primaryKey as byte array: {0}",
e.ToString());
}

}


This code will result in the exception being thrown. There *IS* a SqlDbType.Binary which is what we really want here, but I can't seem to find the appropriate System.Type to suggest as the DataColumn type to avoid the exception.

Anyone have ideas?

Thanks,
/s/ James

 

[Val Mazur]

Hi James,

I believe you cannot use binary datatype as a primary key. Actually you
cannot use any BLOB-type field as a primary key. What about using int64
datatype? It is an 8-byte long, but not sure if this is what you need.
Another potential way is to create 8 columns of byte datatype and group them
into one primary key