[development] Why do we avoid auto-incrementing db columns?

Syscrusher syscrusher at 4th.com
Wed Apr 25 14:52:01 UTC 2007


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.something and
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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