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Negative numbers for PK/ID's?
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* Negative numbers for PK/ID's?
@ 2008-02-05 19:42 Steve Midgley <public@misuse.org>
  2008-02-05 21:23 ` Re: Negative numbers for PK/ID's? Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 2+ messages in thread

From: Steve Midgley @ 2008-02-05 19:42 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: pgsql-sql

Hi,

A while ago on a different SQL platform, I had the idea to use negative 
numbers as id's for certain system records that I didn't prefer to have 
interspersed with other records in a table. (For example, we had 
"template" records which we used to spawn new records, and rather than 
store them in a different table we just had records id=-1,-2 etc and 
did an insert/select to create new "live" rows based on the templates). 
Preventing them from displaying in the results was as simple as 
ensuring that all select statements had a "id > 0" statement in them..

I'm wondering if there are any Bad Things that happen if I use negative 
integers for primary key values in Postgres (v8.2)? My primary keys are 
all bigserial type.

Any comments or advice?

Thanks!

Steve




^ permalink  raw  reply  [nested|flat] 2+ messages in thread

* Re: Negative numbers for PK/ID's?
  2008-02-05 19:42 Negative numbers for PK/ID's? Steve Midgley <public@misuse.org>
@ 2008-02-05 21:23 ` Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 2+ messages in thread

From: Tom Lane @ 2008-02-05 21:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Steve Midgley <public@misuse.org>; +Cc: pgsql-sql

Steve Midgley <public@misuse.org> writes:
> I'm wondering if there are any Bad Things that happen if I use negative 
> integers for primary key values in Postgres (v8.2)?

No.

			regards, tom lane



^ permalink  raw  reply  [nested|flat] 2+ messages in thread

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2008-02-05 19:42 Negative numbers for PK/ID's? Steve Midgley <public@misuse.org>
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