Hi,
In one of my tables I have a column that is a kind of tracking number for a product. It is the primary key of the table composed of a string of numbers (date+ id product+ id person processing order, etc) that I have defined as a text, because it is too long to be declared as an integer.

- Is a text primary key less efficient than an integer one?
- Is it safer (for database integrity) to have a autonumber primary key?

Thanks very much.

Yes, integer primary key is always a better option. To me, it's the only option. Auto-number primary key is better than the tracking number in your project, IMO.

The performance is better, also with auto-number primary key, there won't be any ambiguity no matter how your business logic changes, or how big you DB becomes in the future. I can see only benefits. Probably the only loss is a few extra lines of code.

Thanks a lot for your reply.
When you say that performance is better with an Auto-number primary key, what exactly do you mean? Is it that indexing and querying is more efficient? Why is that?
Thanks very much again for your help.

Integer must be faster than string for index, search and other database queries, thus the performance is better. Sorry, I don't know how to explain further.

Thanks a lot!