On Mon, Sep 24, 2007 at 12:50:22PM +0530, Anoo Sivadasan Pillai wrote: > I am using "PostgreSQL 8.2.4 on i686-pc-mingw32, compiled by GCC > gcc.exe (GCC) 3.4.2 (mingw-special)" on Windows 2003 server > > While I am trying to update a prmary key It is failing with the > following message "ERROR: duplicate key violates unique constraint > "master_pkey" " > > Can anybody explain why this happens so? Sending the script that I > tried. > > CREATE TABLE master ( m1 INT primary key , m2 VARCHAR(100)) ; > > INSERT INTO master VALUES ( 1, 'm1' ) ; > > INSERT INTO master VALUES ( 2, 'm2' ) ; > > UPDATE master SET m1 = m1 + 1; One way to do this is with Postgres's UPDATE ... FROM construct: CREATE TABLE foo(i INTEGER PRIMARY KEY); INSERT INTO foo(i) VALUES (1), (2), (3), (4), (5); UPDATE foo SET i=foo.i+1 FROM (SELECT i FROM foo ORDER BY i DESC) f WHERE f.i = foo.i; While specific to Postgres, this technique avoids a lot of messing around with boundary conditions :) Cheers, David. -- David Fetter <david@xxxxxxxxxx> http://fetter.org/ phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Skype: davidfetter Remember to vote! Consider donating to PostgreSQL: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org/