Ok, just to clarify? Replicate autonumber in SQL how? You mean within an SQL function/store procedure or in another coding lanuage (if so which one)?

IDENTITY(x,y) is how you use autonumber in SQL ( x = starting point, and y = increment by)

Well kind of.

Ok here is the syntax on creating a table in SQL and having an autonumber column

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MS SQL Syntax (Toggle Plain Text)

CREATE TABLE NorthWindUsers 
         (UserID INT IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
          UserName VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
          Password VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL)

CREATE TABLE NorthWindUsers (UserID INT IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, UserName VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL, Password VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL)

The userID will start a 1, and increment each time you add a new user to the table; automatically


Hope this helps

You know, this feature isn't in Oracle as I recently discovered. Is it considered bad to use autoincrementing numbers? Certainly makes it easy to maintain a primary key with little effort. I am just trying to understand in what situation you wouldn't want to use that feature. Obviously Oracle doesn't seem to want you to use it at all.

I don't know that Oracle thinks it is a bad thing, they just choose to solve the problem a different way--with "sequences". In Oracle, as you may know, a sequence is it's own thing outside of any table. Personally, I wish the databases I work with had both an autonumber/identity and a feature like a sequence. They are both very handy. A sequence can be useful if you need a way to have an id unique across multiple tables or multiple databases.

It's easy enough to code your own sequence-like feature using a one column/one row table and a function, but I assume Oracle's sequence feature is highly optimized to do what it does.