CELKO (12/14/2012)
I hope you know that IDENTITY has no place in RDBMS. It is how non-SQL programmers fake a magnetic tape file in SQL. You also do not know about ISO-11179 naming rules. Is this what you meant if you had a valid schema with a key?CREATE TABLE MAS_Shifts
(facility_id INTEGER NOT NULL,
shift_name CHAR(3) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (facility_id, shift_name),
shift_type CHAR(5) NOT NULL);
INSERT INTO MAS_Shifts
VALUES (1, 'M', 3') , (1, 'N', '3'), ( 1, 'G', '1');
After that, I have no idea what your question is. Can you try again?
I hope you know better and will disregard the above misleading advise.
IDENTITY has a very important place in RDBMS and especially in SQL Server. It's very often the best candidate for a surrogate PK.
IDENTITY-like structures are implemented in most of the known RDBMS(s) and they have nothing to do with magnetic tape files or/and punch cards!