I am pretty much self taught using SQL, and I suspect that my problem here is trying to do something silly. I have since changed my tables and avoided the problem, but I am curious as to why this happens, and it's remotely possible I have even found a bug or two. I created a table with only a sequence: CREATE TABLE aaa ( id SERIAL, ); I can't insert into aaa unless I pass a value; these don't work: insert into aaa; insert into aaa values (); insert into aaa () values (); But this does: insert into aaa values (1); except that the value inserted is not known to the sequence. (** This seems a bug to me **) This also works: insert into aaa values (nextval('aaa_id_seq')); but sort of defeats the purpose of using a type SERIAL rather than hand rolling my own sequence. -- ... _._. ._ ._. . _._. ._. ___ .__ ._. . .__. ._ .. ._. Felix Finch: scarecrow repairman & rocket surgeon / [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG = E987 4493 C860 246C 3B1E 6477 7838 76E9 182E 8151 ITAR license #4933 I've found a solution to Fermat's Last Theorem but I see I've run out of room o