Duplicate Serial Numbers

[FMDuck]

I have a customer that is having regular problems with duplicate serial numbers in FMP 7. They have multiple users creating new records at one time and they are getting as many as 3-4 duplicates a day. Serialization is set to occur on record creation.

In FMP 6 I scripted record creation and put users into a que while a different user was creating a new record. I've come to believe that duplicates shouldn't occur in 7. I've change the field to serialize on record commit for now (hoping that will help.)

Has anyone else had any experience with this? Thanks much.

[crpatter]

We had a similar problem, but our users were offline when the records were created then uploaded to our server later when they came in from the field.

Our solution is not to use serial numbers as primary keys, rather the pk is a auto-enter calc field that uses a timestamp concatenated with a 9 digit random number. While it's not impossible for a duplicate to occur, it is very, very unlikely.

Right("00" & Month(Get ( CurrentDate )); 2) & Right("00" & Day(Get ( CurrentDate )); 2) & Year(Get ( CurrentDate )) & Right("00" & Hour(Get(CurrentTime)); 2) & Right("00" & Minute(Get(CurrentTime)); 2) & Right("00" & Seconds(Get(CurrentTime)); 2) & Right(Random; 9)

**Note** The timestamp digits were broken apart, though I don't think it is necessary..