mikeo wrote: > > thanks for the response. oid is equivalent to oracle rowid. > rownum can be used similar to the limit option of select in postgres > but in oracle it can also be used in a where clause, or as an assigment > in an update statement for instance. > > eg: update ctmaster set bsc_id = mod(rownum,3) +1; > > this gives me a way to assign streams to rows in a load balanced manner > on the fly, for example. i use it in other more involved ways than this > also. i cannot do this with limit. i could do this with sequence with > a max value but i'd have to define a sequence each time i wanted to do > something "on the fly" or for what ifs. > > what i'm also interested in is how to find reference to these type of > pseudo-columns, even just the names of them, if they're listed somewhere. I think this might be the list, but you might query pgsql-hackers for more info. There was a recent thread involving this.. ctid oid xmin (minimum transaction number) xmax cmin (minimum command number) cmax ctid may be what you're looking for, but I don't understand very well how these are used. Maybe someone else can say or you can experiment... Regards, Ed Loehr (PS: Posting to only one of -general or -sql will almost always be sufficient.)