[Resolved] Manually inserting a number into a auto incrementing column

[BigBadKev]

Hi all,

A freind and I are updating a database doing it two different ways, mine is by updating the record and it all works the problem/question is the other person is doing this in a way that appears strange.
He starts with puting the incremented number (id number) into a variable and then deleting the entire record, from here he adds a new record using the previous variable that contains the previous record's incremented number.
Is what we are seeing a bug/fault or is it possible to reuse a incremented number as long as the number is not repeated remains true?

BigBadKev

[tekky]

I have heard that updating/changing/readding auto incremented values can be detrimental to the server and your database integrity... however I have never seen any facts to back this up or had any problems with it myself... However, I have only ever had to do this maybe twice... and for no major databases