That's actually true enough, but then you also need to ask what that sequence represents? The order in which the documents were created? If so, why not sort by the created date, and if need be, hide that column in the view? Then you don't even have to come up with a way of "numbering" the documents into a sequence, which as we all know with a distributed system like Notes, isn't quite as easy as it sounds.

OK, you say, I need a "handle" to refer to these documents with, and that is a good point; which is of course why Lotus Notes has @unique, after all. As this is also based on the clock time, sorting by that value will also generate an ascending, by creation date, list.

Conclusion
In conclusion, when designing applications, consider carefully whether the value you are keeping really is a number that you will use in arithmetic calculations, or whether it is just a text string that contains numeric characters. You won't regret those few extra moments in your application design process when you see the extra robustness of the application and its greater resilience to change.

Bain McKay is Executive Vice President and Chief Scientist of CIRI Lab Inc. where he and his research team build advanced Knowledge Management technology using the latest methods in Cognitive Science and computing technology. Bain can be reached at bmckay@cirilab.com or at http://www.cirilab.com.