Dear all,
we have built a small utitlity to save some business data. it uses the msde as its database.

because the msde doesn't have any enterprize manager, we had to create a backup/restore functions inside the software.

since its only about 10 tables in the database, we would like to save the data into xml files and resotre them back from xml files.

our problem is this:

we didn't implement physical database relations inside the database. although we are using relational database designs. but we prefer to join rows on runtime and not implement relations inside the database.

this seems to be a very large problem in backup and restoring why?

because we are have for example two tables : [documents] & [docdetails]

documents table has an identity integer column which we use as primary key.

docdetails rows has a foriegn key column called [document] which is related to the [documents.serial]

when we save the data to xml files its ok, but when we try to retireve the data from xml into the msde database. all [documents] rows are assigned a new autonumber , this way all the related rows in the docdetails table loses their correct integerity with the data .

i hope i am clear, is there any solution to solve this problem ????

thank you in advance

rgds