Abhimanyu Parasher wrote:
>
> Hi!
> Thanks for reading this posting.
> Can anybody explain me how to generate a sequence for a specific column. For example I want to an id column to be generated automatically in a sequence (1,2,3,4 i.e. something of sort of AUTOINCREMENT).
>
> I tried to use a trigger for BEFORE INSERT, but was unsuccessful.
One problem I always see when people ask this type of question is an
indication that they want to have a database like dBase, Paradox or some
other non-relational database. The sequence numbers are used as if they
were record id's. What really needs to be learned is how to determine
the natural key for the data and forget about concepts such as the
"first" record, the "last" record and whether a record is greater than
or less than some other record. Those concepts have nothing to do with
relational databases and are more of a hinderance than a help in
developing a normalized database.
Received on Sat Jul 17 1999 - 16:23:53 CDT
