Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 13:44:52 -0200
From: Rodrigo Bernardo Pimentel <rbp@pobox.com>
To: pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
Subject: auto_increment?
Message-ID: <19991021134452.E25861@pobox.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Sender: Rodrigo Pimentel <rbp@that.com.br>

	Hi.
	I recently had to port a script from using Postgres to MySQL. 
	In Postgres, when I have to use a unique id, I create a sequence
and call nextval('sequence') each time I insert a new line in the table.
	MySQL doesn't have sequences (as far as the documentation shows).
So I had to look for an alternative. I found an atribute "auto_increment"
which seems pretty interesting. If I do
CREATE TABLE table (
id       int4 primary key auto_increment,
name     text,
email    text);

	It automatically assigns the next value when I do
INSERT INTO table (nome, email) values ('My name', 'me@somewhere.com');

	When I noticed MySQL didn't have sequences, I cursed a lot. When I 
found this out, though, I kept wondering if Postgres also had it, but I
couldn't find any mention in the documentation. Does anyone know if something
similar exists? Am I doing thins the hard way? Is there any other way of 
automagically getting unique ids?
	TIA,


		rbp

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