If you are looking for a way to generate a gapless sequence of numbers, a sequence is not the right choice, and you will have to resort to less efficient and more complicated techniques. This is required for good performance, and it does not constitute a problem. Sequences don’t follow the normal transactional rules: if a transaction rolls back, the sequence does not reset its counter. Still, accessing a sequence from many concurrent SQL statements could become a bottleneck, so there is the CACHE option that makes the sequence hand out several values at once to database sessions. Sequences are highly optimized for concurrent access, and they will never issue the same number twice. It does this using an internal counter that it increments. There are two basic techniques: Generating keys with a sequenceĪ sequence is a database object whose sole purpose in life is to generate unique numbers. Techniques for auto-generated primary keys in PostgreSQL Some people even argue that you should use an artificial primary key even if there is a natural one, but I won’t go into that “holy war”. But typically, there is no such attribute, and you have to generate an artificial primary key. Now, sometimes a table has a natural primary key, for example the social security number of a country’s citizens. This is because foreign key constraints typically reference primary keys, and changing a primary key that is referenced elsewhere causes trouble or unnecessary work. You are well advised to choose a primary key that is not only unique, but also never changes during the lifetime of a table row. If you wonder why, search the internet for the thousands of questions asking for help with removing duplicate entries from a table. In a relational database, it is important to be able to identify an individual table row. Why auto-generated primary keys?Įvery table needs a primary key. In this article, I’ll explore the options and give recommendations. UPDATED : Sometimes customers ask me about the best choice for auto-generated primary keys. Note that MySQL requires an unique or primary key constraint on AUTO_INCREMENT columns.įor more information, see Generating IDs in MySQL.Auto-generated auto-increment autoincrement identity columns postgresql primary key sequence uuid Name VARCHAR (90 ) ) AUTO_INCREMENT = 1 - start value There is the table option AUTO_INCREMENT that allows you to define the start value, but you cannot define the increment, it is always 1: MySQL supports AUTO_INCREMENT column option that allows you to automatically generate IDs. SQL Server supports IDENTITY property and allows you to specify the initial and increment values: Note that a trigger is required as Oracle does not allow using NEXTVAL in DEFAULT clause for a column. Oracle does not support SERIAL (auto-increment, identity) columns, but this functionality can be implemented using a sequence and a trigger:ĬREATE SEQUENCE teams_id_seq START WITH 1 INCREMENT BY 1 If you remove rows from a table, you can insert removed IDs explicitly, it will not have any effect on the sequence generator. Continue, now it will use ID 9 INSERT INTO teams (name ) VALUES ( 'Newcastle United' ) ERROR: duplicate key value violates unique constraint "teams_id_key" - DETAIL: Key (id)=(8) already exists. Will try to assign ID 8 that already inserted INSERT INTO teams (name ) VALUES ( 'Some team' ) You can get an error if there is an UNIQUE constraint, or duplicate IDs can be inserted: Note that the sequence generator may have conflicts with IDs that were already inserted using explicit values. Continue using ID generator INSERT INTO teams (name ) VALUES ( 'Liverpool' ) - ID 7 is assigned Insert ID 8 explicitly INSERT INTO teams VALUES ( 8, 'Everton' ) If you insert an ID value explicitly, it has no effect on the sequence generator, and its next value remains unchanged and will be used when you insert subsequent rows: SERIAL - Specify Initial Value and Increment ERROR: null value in column "id" violates not-null constraint INSERT INTO teams VALUES ( 0, 'Reserved' ) INSERT INTO teams VALUES ( NULL, 'Some team' ) In MySQL these 2 values force ID generation, but this is not applied to PostgerSQL: Note that you cannot insert NULL, but can insert 0. Specify DEFAULT INSERT INTO teams VALUES ( DEFAULT, 'Manchester City' ) Omit serial column INSERT INTO teams (name ) VALUES ( 'Aston Villa' ) To generate a ID value, you can omit the SERIAL column in INSERT statement, or specify DEFAULT keyword: If you need a SERIAL column to be unique, you have to specify UNIQUE or PRIMARY KEY explicitly. Id INT NOT NULL DEFAULT NEXTVAL ( 'teams_id_seq' ) , is equivalent to CREATE SEQUENCE teams_id_seq When you define a SERIAL column, PostgreSQL automatically changes column to NOT NULL, creates a sequence tablename_serialcol_seq and DEFAULT NEXTVAL to select ID values from the sequence only if they are not supplied in INSERT statement:
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