RE: MIDRANGE-L Digest, Vol 16, Issue 1355

I an old school and was taught the same way you were. Create a Customer# field and make it unique. I believe the recommendation on using a system generated identity
column that would only ever been seen by an IT person is to protect against future business need changes. In 10 years what would you do if for some reason this table no
longer could use the Customer# as unique. For some reason you had to allow for two records with the same Customer#. You would lose the unique key and would probably
be forced to add a new field/column, like a sequence number, to keep a unique key. If you have an Identity field/column that issue goes away.

Normally a good approach, but beware of this in JD Edwards. At least at E1 levels, it supports Line of Business functionality, where a customer number can be identical to other entries, but differ by a secondary key (Company). This allows large organizations, with multiple companies ("lines of business") to use the same account, but each entity can have different credit limits/terms/price schedules/etc.

The very least you should use in Address Number (AIAN8) and Company (AICO).

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