Fixing DB Inconsistencies - ID Fields

Question

I've inherited a (Microsoft?) SQL database that wasn't very pristine in its original state. There are still some very strange things in it that I'm trying to fix - one of them is inconsistent ID entries.

In the accounts table, each entry has a number called accountID, which is referenced in several other tables (notes, equipment, etc. ). The problem is that the numbers (for some random reason) - range from about -100000 to +2000000 when there are about only 7000 entries.

Is there any good way to re-number them while changing corresponding numbers in the other tables? At my disposal I also have ColdFusion, so any thing that works with SQL and/or that I'll accept.

Answer 1

For surrogate keys, they are meant to be meaningless, so unless you actually had a database integrity issue (like there were no foreign key contraints properly defined) or your identity was approaching the maximum for its datatype, I would leave them alone and go after some other low hanging fruit that would have more impact.