Re: Serial Unique question

On Mon, 2005-08-15 at 11:48 -0400, Madison Kelly wrote:
> Douglas McNaught wrote:
> > Madison Kelly <linux@alteeve.com> writes:
> >
> >
> >>   I want to use a 'serial uniue' column in a table but there is
> >>   likely to be many, many inserts and deletes from this column. I was
> >>   wondering, what happens when the serial value reaches
> >>   2,147,483,647'? Does it roll back over to '1' and keep going or
> >>   will the database start erroring out? This isn't likely to be a
> >>   problem any time soon, but over the course of a year or more it
> >>   might be.
> >
> >
> > Use a "bigserial" instead?
> >
> > -Doug
> >
>
> Same issue, delaying a potential problem, not addressing it. :)
>
> Madison
>
\h CREATE SEQUENCE
Command:     CREATE SEQUENCE
Description: define a new sequence generator
Syntax:
CREATE [ TEMPORARY | TEMP ] SEQUENCE name [ INCREMENT [ BY ] increment ]
    [ MINVALUE minvalue | NO MINVALUE ] [ MAXVALUE maxvalue | NO
MAXVALUE ]
    [ START [ WITH ] start ] [ CACHE cache ] [ [ NO ] CYCLE ]

Based on the last argument, a sequence can be created to either cycle or
not; it would appear as though the default, when created automagically
by invoking the [big]serial "data type", is to not cycle; my guess in
that case would be that an error would be raised if you have reached
2^31 in your serial field.

Sven

Sven