Sally Sally wrote:
> This
> existing unique field will have to be a character of fixed length
> (VARCHAR(12)) because although it's a numeric value there will be
> leading zeroes.
Plenty of people are contributing their tuppence-worth regarding the
choice of surrogate vs natural primary key.
Can I just point out that your existing unique field is EITHER a numeric
value OR it has a fixed number of characters - numbers don't have
leading zeros.
If what you have is a number, then perhaps consider int8/numeric types
and format appropriately when you display the values.
--
Richard Huxton
Archonet Ltd