> > On or about Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 10:43:17AM +0100, Peter Haworth typed: > > >Surely you shouldn't rely on sequences being contiguous, anyway? Who cares > > >if your test eats up some values; their only purpose should be to ensure > > >uniqueness.
>On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 10:47:23AM +0100, Roger Burton West wrote: > > Contiguity becomes important when you're doing things like generating > > invoice numbers. David Cantrell said: > > I've been told that before, but I've never understood why. > > On the rare occasions when I generate invoices, I ensure uniqueness by > making > > the invoice number something like YYYYMMDDN. It isn't a legal or technical reason, more of a confidence boosting reason. It is mostly so that they are traceable. Accountants will say use a contiguous sequence of numbers so that they know that they haven't missed any, and also so that they can show to the government that they haven't missed any. Alex Openweb Analysts Ltd, London. Software For Complex Websites http://www.OWAL.co.uk/ Open Source Software Companies please register here http://www.OWAL.co.uk/oss_support/
