Incremental and Random

[Guest]

I am getting really frustrated. The minute I changed a table to 'replicable',
its incremental autonumber field gets changed to random autonumer. Which does
not make sense at all.

Does anyone has any simple solution (without having to go through some
painstaking process) that can help me change them back to incremental?
Really... random seems really stupid.

Please help!!!!

 

[Ken Snell [MVP]]

That is how replication is designed to work.

 

[John Vinson]

I am getting really frustrated. The minute I changed a table to 'replicable',
its incremental autonumber field gets changed to random autonumer. Which does
not make sense at all.

Does anyone has any simple solution (without having to go through some
painstaking process) that can help me change them back to incremental?
Really... random seems really stupid.

It's not stupid. It's the only way autonumbers can possibly WORK in a
replicated database.

Think about it: you have one replica of your database; Jerry has
another on his laptop.

You enter a record into an autonumbered table. If it's an incrementing
autonumber, you get 1231, let's say. Jerry enters a record into the
same table: he also gets 1231.

Bang... primary key conflict, right there. And if you enter twenty
records and Jerry enters more, there are twenty primary key conflicts
to resolve.

If, however, you get 324118231, 1412661115, and -88244125, while Jerry
gets 5451124, -1231814226 and 592446513, no conflict arises.

Take your pick: replicate, or increment. You can't have both.

John W. Vinson[MVP]

 

[Brendan Reynolds]

In addition to the advice you have already received, you may find it useful
to review the on-line help topic 'Changes made to your database when you use
replication', which you can find at the following URL ...
http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/hfws.aspx?AssetID=HP052167961033

 

[Joseph Meehan]

I am getting really frustrated. The minute I changed a table to
'replicable', its incremental autonumber field gets changed to random
autonumer. Which does not make sense at all.

Does anyone has any simple solution (without having to go through some
painstaking process) that can help me change them back to incremental?
Really... random seems really stupid.

Please help!!!!

I might add that if this is an issue, it sounds like you should not be
using an autonumber at all. Autonumbers, even incremental, don't guarantee
consecutive. If you or other users expect to see consecutive numbers,
autonumber is not the way to go.