Relational DBs - ID Field

[Erik_Meyer]

Hello,

I am using a MySQL database for my apps. I’ve done some reading and am confused about the issues with the auto incremented PK field.

From what I have read so far (older messages and articles), AppSheets is unable to insert a record without itself generating the new key. I find it quite boggling that a platform designed to work with data cannot actually work with the standard method of inserting records to a database. Is this still the case? Please tell me this has been addressed.

I saw a forum post from Oct 2018:

Hi there, I am using Google Cloud SQL for m...

If you absolutely have to have an identity column, or an auto-increment key column in your database, you can work around this by using 2 different key columns. One column will be the actual identity column in the database. The other key column will be the key column in AppSheet. This way, you can mark the identity as not required by the app so that it can be left blank. Each time new rows are inserted into the database, the database will automatically generate new key values for the identity column. As for the AppSheet key column, you can use the UNIQUEID() expression to generate new unique key values for this column. To the database, key values in this column won’t count since it’s not an identity column.

I suppose I can adapt to this method, but I am confused on what the implications are.

• Will the new UNIQUEID key referenced above ever be used for anything other than allowing AppSheets to be “happy” with a new record?

• Would I still be able to reference all of my data using the actual PKs?

• Is there another solution that doesn’t use the random number generator? (Only other solution I found used it)

• Is there any downside to AppSheets not understanding that the REAL PK is one marked as not a key and not required?