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Jalon Q. Zimmerman (jalonz@hermesnet.net)
Tue, 07 Jan 1997 21:39:03 -0500 

Message-Id: <1.5.4.32.19970108023903.0069c844@hermesnet.net>
Date: Tue, 07 Jan 1997 21:39:03 -0500
From: "Jalon Q. Zimmerman" <jalonz@hermesnet.net>
Subject: [mSQL] sequence numbers

This is probably fairly obvious to most but it escapes me...

I want to assign each record in a table a unique id number basically for use
as a primary key. It would be very handy to have an autoincrementing number
handled by the database engine. Is this the same thing as the new _seq feature?

I understand that I can create a sequence, and it will return an incremented
number every time I call _seq in that table. Is this value used to implement
an autoincrementing id?

Does the _seq value never get called except when I specifically call it?
What happens when in the course of adding and deleting records the _seq
value gets to be very large and possibly out of range? What are the methods
people are using to fill in the holes left by deleted records?

Sincerely,

Jalon Q. Zimmerman
jalonz@hermesnet.net

Hermes Internet Service
http://www.hermesnet.net/
(202)-646-1640

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