Renumber References

The purpose with CanDB is to produce digital composites. Similar to printed composites such as BCU, USBC, etc, the use of brewery and item reference numbers for a digital composite are intended to uniquely identify a given item, and for these reference numbers to be remain constant for the lifetime of the item. For example, within CanDB the reference number “120-40” refers to brewery number “120”, item number “40” within that brewery. Ideally gaps were left in the brewery and item numbering and new items may be inserted into open slots without changing any numbers.

However, it is not always possible to plan ahead, or for CanDB usage for personal collections or composites still in development, the numbers are not all that critical. As such, CanDB has the “Tools -> Renumber Brewery References” and “Tools -> Renumber Item References” respectively. Usage of either menu item will open a dialog which allows specification of integer increment number.

By pressing the “Renumber” button, the first Brewery or Item will be numbered with the given increment, and each subsequent object will get the next increment. Using an increment of “5”, all entries will be re-numbered as 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, etc. Please note there is no “UNDO” of this operation, with objects saved to disk during the renumbering process.

Some users prefer to have all reference numbers with exactly the same number of digits, with leading “0”’s prepended if necessary. For example, instead of 80-5 and 100-23, it may be desirable to have all brewery and all item references have the same number of digits, e.g. 080-05 and 100-23, with three digits for all breweries, two digits for all items. The entry “Number of Digits” is used to control how many digits for the given type, with 0’s prepended as necessary.