I am creating a database that by it's nature will be used locally and syncronised with a central copy whenever possible.

To retain integrity Primary Keys will be generated by auto-incremented added to the username of the person adding the record, my problem is how to store this.

Using 2 Fields seems wasteful or untidy. The alternative that I can see would be to combine them into a single field, this again doesn't seem to be a very nice way of doing things.

I'm guessing that I am being pedantic, and that creating a single field would be the best option.

Any thoughts?

Cheers
Matt

If you are concerned about keeping the IDs unique across distributed databases, use a GUID as a primary key instead of an integer.

if you stay with the username plus autonumber, keep them as separate fields

Note that an autoincrement/sequence/identity field is unique, by itself. The name field would not be required for uniqueness, and is thus redundant to be included as a part of the PK.

yes, but loquin, what if the database will be "syncronised with a central copy whenever possible"

if todd creates rows 1, 3, and 5 in his local database, and mary creates rows 2, 4, and 5 in her local database, what happens when these rows are brought into the central database?

hence the need for an additional column in the primary key

D'oh! missed that.