On 21-08-2009 16:04:55 +0100, Sam Mason wrote:
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 10:15:15PM +0200, Fabian Groffen wrote:
In fact "serial" is nothing more than a PostgreSQL convenience alias (like MySQL's auto_increment that MonetDB also supports), mapping onto the standard using sequences, hence that output when you describe the table again.
Huh, I always thought that PGs syntax sugar for SERIAL "types" was to support the SQL standard. I can't find much mention of them in my copy of the 2003 specs though. Lots of stuff about generators, but the syntax doesn't look very pretty.
To the best of my knowledge, SERIAL is a PostgreSQL addition.
PG does make a distinction between SERIAL and BIGSERIAL "types" though, the former ending up as column of type 32bit signed integer and the latter of type 64bit signed integer. Maybe it would be useful for MonetDB to support both, if it's not too much fiddling it may be useful.
Supporting BIGSERIAL would not be too hard.