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

[Earnest Berry III]

FYI: SQL Server's version is the IDENTITY field. E.g.
CREATE TABLE x ( id INT IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY);

-----Original Message-----
From: development-bounces at drupal.org [mailto:development-bounces at drupal.org]
On Behalf Of Syscrusher
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 10:52 AM
To: development at drupal.org
Cc: Ezra B. Gildesgame
Subject: Re: [development] Why do we avoid auto-incrementing db columns?

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

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
Syscrusher (Scott Courtney)          Drupal page:
http://drupal.org/user/9184
syscrusher at 4th dot com            Home page:     http://4th.com/