When having an identity column is not a good idea?

Question

In tables where you need only 1 column as the key, and values in that column can be integers, when you shouldn\'t use an identity field?

To the contrary, in

Answer 1

You cannot (normally) specify values when inserting into identity columns, so for example if the column "id" was specified as an identify the following SQL would fail:

INSERT INTO MyTable (id, name) VALUES (1, 'Smith')

In order to perform this sort of insert you need to have IDENTITY_INSERT on for that table - this is not intended to be on normally and can only be on for a maximum of 1 tables in the database at any point in time.