Full site membership is required for this article. Already a full member? Login here. You currently have a guest membership. You can upgrade to full site membership here (free trial available). Creating a Non-Sequential Order Number System based on Microsoft SQL Server   Article Abstract: (Noah Subrin) Some e-commerce systems employ a sequential order numbering scheme. In some scenarios this design is not desirable. . I worked for an e-commerce company that did not want its order volume available to competitors, and used a system that generated sequential order numbers. A competitor could place an order first thing in the morning and another order at the end of the day. By subtracting the first order number from the last order number, one could derive a close estimate of the actual orders generated. I was tasked with creating a non-sequential ordering system.   Read this article...

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RE: Creating a Non-Sequential Order Number System based on Microsoft SQL Server
by S Maloney (posted: 8/14/2006 1:00:38 PM)
FWIW a common approach where a requirement is that no customer should have an idea of invoice / order counts from an invoice or order number is to implement a two key order logical design, that is to say each customer would then have private invoice numbers (1-n designating each customer's 1st to nth order - which must be combined with a customer identifier); for design convenience, one may also implement a surrogate key to support DRI throughout the rest of the system.

RE: Creating a Non-Sequential Order Number System based on Microsoft SQL Server
by Michael Clifford (posted: 8/14/2006 1:26:51 PM)
Good explaination and test files.