Question

I’ve a table which contains sequence number.

Table structure

SequenceGenerator
    Year int
    Month int
    NextNumber int

Year + Month make primary key. Sequence is reset every month.

I’m using Subsonic to generate DAL. To get next sequence number I’ve written a class which returns next number to requestors:

private static readonly object _lock = new Object();
private static readonly string FormatString = "{0}{1}{2}{3}";
private static readonly string NumberFormat = "000000";

public static object GetNextNumber(string prefix)
{
    lock (_lock)
    {
        int yr = DateTime.Now.Year;
        int month = DateTime.Now.Month;

        SequenceGeneratorCollection col = new SequenceGeneratorCollection()
           .Where(SequenceGenerator.Columns.Year, Comparison.Equals, yr)
          .Where(SequenceGenerator.Columns.Month, Comparison.Equals, month)
          .Load();

        if (col==null || col.Count == 0)
        {
            SequenceGenerator tr = new SequenceGenerator();
            tr.Year = yr;
            tr.Month = month;
            tr. NextNumber = 1;
            tr.Save();
            return string.Format(FormatString, prefix, yr, 
                      month,tr.NextNumber.ToString(NumberFormat));
        }

        SequenceGenerator  t = col[0];
        t.NextNumber += 1;
        t.Save();

        return string.Format(FormatString, prefix, yr, month, 
                 t.NextNumber.ToString(NumberFormat));
    }
}

Answer 1

This lock won’t when you have more than one client locking different _lock objects. You should use the database locking mechanisms for this.