Joe Conway wrote: > Tom Lane wrote: > > Joe Conway <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >>I agree 100%. If you want an index, unique constraint, or primary key on > >>a SERIAL, I think you should explicitly add it. SERIAL should give me a > >>column that automatically increments -- no more, no less. > > > > Hmm, do you also want to eliminate the implicit NOT NULL constraint? > > > > I think that efficiency and orthogonality are adequate reasons for > > dissociating UNIQUE from SERIAL. The efficiency argument is pretty > > weak in the case of the NOT NULL part, though, so maybe backwards > > compatibility should win out there. > > To be honest I wasn't thinking about NOT NULL. I'd agree with leaving > that in place. > > Maybe I should restate my comment above: SERIAL should give me a column > that automatically increments -- no more, no less -- and it should not > allow me to override the value that it gives. Hence an implicit NOT > NULL, but also an implicit rejection of a manual insert/update of that > field (how hard would this be to do?).
If don't understand. We already have a unique index on the SERIAL column, so why bother rejecting an insert/update that supplies the value? We need the column to be unique, and that is forced, but why prevent _any_ unique value from being used. Clearly NULL is not a valid value and should be prevented with NOT NULL. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us [EMAIL PROTECTED] | (610) 359-1001 + If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073 ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send "unregister YourEmailAddressHere" to [EMAIL PROTECTED])
