Today I received an update to a suggestion I made to Microsoft on April 8, 2005.  http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=102180  That was before Beta 2 of Whidbey if memory serves me right.  My suggestion was to add features to the Membership API that would allow for a user to be renamed.  There are many scenerios where we choose to use the full Email address of a user as their username instead of having a seperate username.  This works great until the user changes their Email address.  (Another reason to have a permanent address that is not affiliated with your ISP)  I need to be able to allow users to update their Email address and thus their username/userid. 

Apparently my suggestion has been considered for Orcas, but isn't going to make it.  Still, I thought it was good that it was at least considered.

In the meantime, I have found that I can rename a user by directly updating the membership database.  Microsoft cautions against this when using multiple stores for Membership, Roles, and Profile data because user + application is the identity that is shared across disparate stores.  It is my opinion that they should have used a unique identifier instead.  The MembershipUser supports such an identity already.  Similiarly I wish Windows authenticated users and forms authenticated users shared a common data type for their identities.  I believe Microsoft would say that indeed they do and this is the string type that the username or User.Identity.Name.  For my purposes I created a database table to map a GUID to Windows identities so that I could normalize all of my UserId's to be unique and meaningless.  A Email address as a username carries meaning.  That makes a bad primary data key in many scenarios because of the lack of good support for renaming.  Keys should never need renaming.  Even a Windows UserId can change when its based on a persons name and their legal name changes.

What do you all think?