Here is the rundown:

I run a security team, and well I am designing a dispatch log of sorts and a report system, Using Access 2010 as the front and SQL server 2008 as the brains for obvious reasons.

I cant have the keys defined by MMDDYYYY-HHMMSS, Simply because we function 24hrs, and since we are on PST, every year in the fall the clock cycles back 1hr, essentially this would create the potential for duplicate keys as the clock has reset one hour every year... Trust me I was going to do this....

Additionally, for the officers reports, I wanted to be able to provide them with a report number upon request. For example:

IR-031111-1 would be = Incident Report 03/11/11 #1

IR-031111-5 would be = Incident Report 03/11/11 #5

Just for the day, then the next day the IR # would recycle back to 1

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No for the activity log, since my security team operates 24hrs a day, 365 days a year, all activity must be logged.

which is why I wanted the key to be:

AL-031111-1

AL-031111-2

AL-031111-3

Then recycle the ending # upon the next day.

If i needed someone to fix a specific log entry #, all I would have to do is tell them to fix log# 23 on todays date.

I hope this makes sense