I am not a DBA so I am scratching my head a bit. I am trying to put together an application for the company I work for. I need to provide a unique customer account number for each office location my company conducts business with.
In the past, I have based customer account numbers off a primary keyed INT columns setup to use incremented identities. I am wondering if this is the best or even worse option for this type of information.
What would you recommend? Thanks in advance for your help.
I would use a natural key, if you can find one. The problem with using meaningless keys is you can end up with duplicates that are difficult to recognize.