There are a number of options for generating ID values for your tables. In this post, Alexey Mikotkin of Devart explores your choices for generating identifiers with a look at auto_increment, triggers, UUID and sequences.

AUTO_INCREMENT

Frequently, we happen to need to fill tables with unique identifiers. Naturally, the first example of such identifiers is PRIMARY KEY data. These are usually integer values hidden from the user since their specific values are unimportant.

When adding a row to a table, you need to take this new key value from somewhere. You can set up your own process of generating a new identifier, but MySQL comes to the aid of the user with the AUTO_INCREMENT column setting. It is set as a column attribute and allows you to generate unique integer identifiers. As an example, consider the …

Why You Care About Numbers

I have worked a bit with Oracle. As such, I hang out around Oracle developers. There seems to be a common complaint among our kind when it comes to MySQL–”There aren’t any sequences!”

It never really bothered me. I wasn’t always an Oracle guy, so I didn’t always have sequences. I’m the kind of person who likes to experiment and make things happen. It just so happens there is a nice tool to help with this perceived absence: the “numbers table.”

It is really easy to set up. And, regardless of your database background, I think you will grow to love your utility.

There are multiple ways to achieve the result you want. For me, the easiest way is to work with decimal numbers. Why? Because that’s how we think. That’s pretty much standard for humans. Yeah, I know. Geeks think hexadecimal. Let’s not go there.

Without further ado, here is how you can create …