Re: Sequences?

That you haven't needed the capabilities provided by Oracle's sequences is fine. Some people, many people perhaps, don't. But some of us do. And for us ... autonumbering would be useless. So are you saying you'd rather have something that limits you to only one possible usage ... or would you rather have something robust, flexible, and scalable?

But I must state that I find the amount of whining over this to be amazing. Is creating and using a SEQUENCE more difficult than creating an autonumbered column? Lets see:

SQL> CREATE SEQUENCE s;

The total characters typed was 18 including spaces and the semicolon. that created the sequence. I'm a bit sore but I'll continue.

Now I'll add the sequence number to the insert statement for the table:

s.NEXTVAL,

Well that took a total of 10 keystrokes including the comma at the end. Probably 11 if you hit the space bar before continuing with the rest of the insert statement.

A total of 29 keystrokes.

Damn I guess you are correct ... my fingers are hurting and I'm developing some kind of syndrome that is going to require extensive use of pain medication, antiinflammatory steroids, and physical therapy.

Daniel Morgan

Heinz Kiosk wrote:

> > There is no relationship between MS Access's autonumbering and a SEQUENCE.
> The
> > autonumering is part of the table and is only capable of sequential
> numbering.
> > It has no flexibility, no programmability, and is strictly tied to a
> single
> > table. All it is is the following code built in and hidden from the end
> user.
> >
> > SELECT MAX(numbering_field)
> > INTO next_number
> > FROM xyz;
> >
> > INSERT INTO xyz
> > (numbering_field + 1, other_field1, other_field2)
> > VALUES
> > (next_number, someval1, someval2);
> >
> > Daniel Morgan
>
> Methinks Daniel doth protest too much ;). "All Autonumber/Identity is" is
> something exteremely useful that answers 99% of needs for this kind of
> thing. I've never wanted numbers that cut across tables and I've never
> wanted anything other than incremental numbering in 20 years of db schema
> design. I agree "create sequence" is more flexible than MS SQL identity or
> MS Access autonumber or DB2 identity or Sybase....(long boring list of rival
> technologies snipped); but sequences are also a pain in the arse when all
> you want is a system generated identity (as supplied in easier form by every
> other db platform I've ever seen). Also are you seriously suggesting that
> the above is the algorithm that any db actually uses? I think not.
> (particularly as you wrote it wrong, SQL syntax error. Also potential
> problems with above algorithm with transactions and synchronicity. Never
> mind)
>
> Regards
Received on Mon Feb 18 2002 - 10:33:44 CST