autonumber fields and sorting

[Veli Izzet]

Hi all,

Autonumber fields tend to start at a random number, and increment from
that number on.

Besides, when deleting some records, understandably some autonumbers are
deleted too.

Does these make any performance issues? Can they be sorted in a way?

Thanks for answers

 

[John Vinson]

Hi all,

Autonumber fields tend to start at a random number, and increment from
that number on.

Besides, when deleting some records, understandably some autonumbers are
deleted too.

Does these make any performance issues? Can they be sorted in a way?

No. An Autonumber is an 8-byte Long Integer; the purpose of an
autonumber is to create a guaranteed-unique value for use as a Primary
Key. They are NOT intended to be visible to humans: accountants tend
to get creeped out when they see Invoice 318 followed by Invoice 320,
which can very easily happen with an Autonumber (the user need only
hit the Escape key while entering Invoice 319 for that autonumber to
disappear forever).

Just use autonumbers as "under the hood" linking fields; don't display
them to users. Unless you have over four billion records in the table,
you won't likely run out (and you can't fit that many records into
Access anyhow).

John W. Vinson[MVP]