Re: select issue with order v8.1

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 4:52 PM, Scott Marlowe <scott(dot)marlowe(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 3:46 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>> Terry <td3201(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>>> I am somewhat confused.  My app is detecting it as a serial data type
>>> but describing the table shows that its an integer.  What am I
>>> missing?
>>
>>> dssystem=# \d clients_event_log
>>>                                        Table "public.clients_event_log"
>>>      Column     |          Type           |
>>>  Modifiers
>>> ----------------+-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>  ev_id          | integer                 | not null default
>>> nextval('clients_event_log_ev_id_seq'::regclass)
>>
>> Nothing.  "Serial" is nothing but a shorthand for an integer column
>> with a default like that.
>
> And a dependency for the sequence on the column.  I wonder if Terry's
> application is sorting through dep info to make a bad decision...
>

I am back to this particular problem. I found a workaround, that is
very poor, which is to create a new table to present the column as an
integer type rather than serial. What do you mean by a dependency?
What is dependent on what? Are there any functions that would create
a new column in the output as an integer type based on the value in
another column?