On Sat, 2006-03-04 at 09:14, tedd wrote: > planetthoughtful wrote: > > >But, too often I've seen people new to database design not liking > >'gaps' because 'user1' will have a unique id of '1', while 'user2' > >will have a unique id of '6' because the records associated with > >unique ids '2' through '5' were deleted during testing, and so on. > >So, they feel that 'user2' should have a unique id of '2', ignoring > >the fact that that's not a unique id at all, if you had id '2' > >associated with another record at some point. > > And, Anthony wrote: > > >I remember the days where i'd > >clear a database after testing to keep the auto_increment inline, but > >eventually, you will get out of sync on that, so it's not a reliable way of > >keeping a numerical sequence. > > Well... I'm one of those people who don't like gaps. I understand > that if the dB is relational, then you shouldn't be concerned about > gaps. Gaps are only perceived from a perspective of an artificial > ordering system -- who knows where the data actually is in memory or > on disk. > > However, when I'm working with a flat dB and want to step through the > records to do editing, I like the records to be in order based upon > an "id" (i.e., Record 1, Record 2, Record 3, and so on). I use an > auto_increment unique "id" for this. > > It's not a big problem for me to keep the records in order either. > Whenever I delete a record, I simply follow with: > > $dbQuery = "ALTER TABLE $dbtable "; > $dbQuery .= "DROP id, "; > $dbQuery .= "ADD id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,"; > $dbQuery .= "AUTO_INCREMENT = 1"; > $result = mysql_query($dbQuery) or die("2. Could not renumber dB > $dbQuery" . mysql_error()); *LOL* I knew those MySQL people shouldn't have made the ALTER TABLE syntax available to just anyone. Gun --> foot --> *BLAM*. I hope to God you never get your hands on a real database with millions of entries. Cheers, Rob. -- .------------------------------------------------------------. | InterJinn Application Framework - http://www.interjinn.com | :------------------------------------------------------------: | An application and templating framework for PHP. Boasting | | a powerful, scalable system for accessing system services | | such as forms, properties, sessions, and caches. InterJinn | | also provides an extremely flexible architecture for | | creating re-usable components quickly and easily. | `------------------------------------------------------------' -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php