I'm creating a natural key for records that are generated with a dat
and timestamp.

The data and timestamp are in a textfile

To get a unique key the timestamp needs to be combined with a coupl
of other ints

Using a DTS VB script

DTSDestination("k") = DTSSource("TimeCol") + DTSSource("numbercolumn"

Column k is the primary key and defined as float in the DB

However, doing it like this does this: TimeCol (say, 10:38)
numbercolumn (say, 238) = 10:38238

I would like to do something like this Cdbl(DTSSource("TimeCol") ) bu
this generates a type mismatch error

In excel if you put a date in a cell and change the cell format t
number it converts the date to a number (julian date?)

My question is how can I generate a unique key using time and integer


I could use date part and remove all the colons or slashes, then ad
the result but I believe this has the possibility of generating
non-unique key

Also I'm importing large amounts of data and don't want to add
processor intensive amount of code in the dts package

Any suggestions would be appreciated

-Davi

Your key sounds more like a smart key to me. Natural keys should come from
your data naturally.

You could do something like

DTSDestination("k") = REPLACE(DTSSource("TimeCol"),":","") &
DTSSource("numbercolumn")

perhaps

"wireless" wrote: