Jeff,

As I pointed out the sequence table is ugly and only works for a single insert. It should only be done when there are interactive inserts done by users. It's useless, as you pointed out, if any set based inserts are going on.

There is a major POS system on the market that I support that uses this type of insert logic and it performs quite well. One insert per cash register per customer standing in line. There was another one where only 1 person in the company did invoicing and it worked well.

The application in question here was adding employees. That seems to be something that would be done one employee at a time.

Other than these types of applications I totally agree with you. It's ugly, not set based and prone to dead locks.

Todd Fifield