Re: Best approach for a "gap-less" sequence

> > AgentM <agentm@themactionfaction.com> writes:
> >> Since the gapless numbers are purely for the benefit of the tax people, you
> >> could build your db with regular sequences as primary  keys and then regularly
> >> (or just before tax-time) insert into a table  which maps the gapless sequence
> >> to the real primary key.
>
> > That's also an interesting approach.  An auxiliary table like
>
> >        transaction integer FK to the transactions table
> >        transaction_nb integer  gapless sequence
>
> > should do it.  A trigger inserting on this auxiliary table would also take
> > care of everything...  If I have an after trigger I believe I wouldn't need
> > any locking...  I have to think about this...
>
> Why putting gapless numbers into the database at all?  Just calculate them at
> query time.

I am curious, can you calculate something like this using only sql? Or you you need to employee a
procedural language like plpsgql?

Regards,

Richard Broersma Jr.