Re: ALTER TABLE with TYPE serial does not work

Richard Broersma schrieb:
> On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 3:16 PM, Andreas Wenk
> <a.wenk@netzmeister-st-pauli.de> wrote:
>
>> Why does this not work:
>>
>> postgres=# ALTER TABLE tab1 ALTER COLUMN nr TYPE serial;
>> ERROR:  type "serial" does not exist
>
> serial is really just "short-hand" for making an integer column use
> default incrementing function.  The following will fully explain what
> it is so that you can alter the column:
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/interactive/datatype-numeric.html#DATATYPE-SERIAL
>
>

Thanks Richard, that helped. I thought maybe there is another reason
because when I create a table and use serial as "type" (like I would
when I use integer) it works well. I know that searial is just for my
convenience as written in the manual. I failed to understand, that it is
not really a type.

Cheers

Andy

--
St.Pauli - Hamburg - Germany

Andreas Wenk