Re: Why do I need to pass value for Serial type in

On Fri, 12 Sep 2003, Duffey, Kevin wrote:

> I don't know if jdbc/java code requires this, but when I use two gui
> admin tools I found, and I insert a row into the table using their row
> editor feature, both require me to enter a number for the Serial type.
> I thought this type was used to auto-increment an id field and that I
> would not need to enter anything into it? Basically we need the normal
> indexed ID field for each table, and we want it to auto-increment. The
> serial shows a function of nextVal() or something like that, so I assume
> it auto-increments, and it shows unique and not-null. Can someone
> explain how serial is used, why would I still need to pass a value for
> it?

You can do this in a few ways.

create table test (id serial unique, info text, num int);
insert into test (info,num) values ('abc',123);
insert into test (id, info, num) values (DEFAULT,'abc',123);
insert into test values (DEFAULT,'abc',123);