----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Cummings" <robert@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "tedd" <tedd@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "PHP-General" <php-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; "benifactor"
<snorris17@xxxxxxx>; "Murray @ PlanetThoughtful" <lists@xxxxxxxxxx>;
"Anthony Ettinger" <aettinger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2006 9:41 AM
Subject: Re: Mysql Rows
> 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
> > $dbQuery" . mysql_error());
>
> *LOL* I knew those MySQL people shouldn't have made the ALTER TABLE
> syntax available to just anyone. Gun --> foot --> *BLAM*. I hope to God
> you never get your hands on a real database with millions of entries.
>
> Cheers,
> Rob.
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>
my reasoning for needing the users number in a database is this...
i am going to be doing a lottery type thing where i grab a random number
between 1 and the result of mysql_num_rows($result)... that is the reason
the gaps matter. the while loop didn't work for me so if anyone could help
me out on how to get this number i would aprreaciate it. thank you in
advance.
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