From: | mark(at)mark(dot)mielke(dot)cc |
---|---|
To: | Mark Dilger <pgsql(at)markdilger(dot)com> |
Cc: | Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>, pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org |
Subject: | Re: Is a SERIAL column a "black box", or not? |
Date: | 2006-04-30 18:07:08 |
Message-ID: | 20060430180708.GA18303@mark.mielke.cc |
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Lists: | pgsql-hackers |
On Sun, Apr 30, 2006 at 09:14:53AM -0700, Mark Dilger wrote:
> Tom Lane wrote:
> > 1. A serial column is a "black box" that you're not supposed to muck with
> > the innards of. This philosophy leads to the proposal that we disallow
> > modifying the column default expression of a serial column, and will
> > ultimately lead to thoughts like trying to hide the associated sequence
> > from direct access at all.
>
> It would be madness to prevent people from accessing the associated sequence.
> Assume the following schema:
>
> CREATE TABLE a (a_id SERIAL NOT NULL UNIQUE, ...);
> CREATE TABLE b (a_fk INTEGER REFERENCES a(a_id), ...);
>
> Now, if I need to insert into both tables a and b, how do I do it? After
> inserting into table a, if I can't access the sequence to get currval, I'll need
> to do a select against the table to find the row that I just inserted (which
> could be slow), and if the columns other than a_id do not uniquely identify a
> single row, then I can't do this at all.
Not madness. Just evidence of another problem, which is where the insert
that returns results comes in...
Cheers,
mark
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