I believe one of the reasons is that many times you want to know the ID of your new record. For example, you inserted a new file to the 'files' table, and you would like to store a reference to it in your xyz table. For mysql there is mysql_insert_id(), but not for others. On 4/25/07, Syscrusher <syscrusher@4th.com> wrote:
On Wednesday 25 April 2007 10:29, Ezra B. Gildesgame wrote:
I happened to discuss this with Greg Knaddison yesterday. MySQL 4 does not support auto-incrementing columns.
I must respectfully disagree. I happened to have a copy of the MySQL reference book from version 3.22 sitting on my bookshelf, and AUTO_INCREMENT was supported even then. :-) Never mind the question of why I still have such an old book....
I also checked a PostgreSQL reference book, and they offer a SERIAL column type that works very similarly to the AUTO_INCREMENT in MySQL. I don't know how far back this support goes; my book is for PG version 8.somethingand was copyright 2006.
I can't comment on the Microsoft SQL Server implementation of this, if any, because I don't have any manual for that here.
Scott
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