Re: Cannot add an column of type serial or bigserial

Dear Pgadmin Folks,

I am using pgadminIII 1.0.2 with PostgreSQL 7.4 under W2K SP4 and Cygwin
(current as of 2 or 3 weeks ago). The server is running locally.

If I attempt to add an column of type serial or bigserial to a table, the
operation fails with a message telling me that adding an column with a
default value is not implemented. What is really weird is that one can, in
fact, add a column with a default value, like an int4 with a default value
or 0. The problem does not arise if the serial (or bigserial) column is
created when the table is created (as a part of CREATE TABLE).

Yours,
David

---
Dr. David E. Sigeti
Phone: 505-667-9239
E-mail: sigeti(at)lanl(dot)gov
Surface mail: X-8, MS-F645, Los Alamos National Laboratory,
Los Alamos, NM 87545 USA

You cannot add a serial column after table creation time in PostgreSQL.

Chris

David Sigeti wrote:

> Dear Pgadmin Folks,
>
> I am using pgadminIII 1.0.2 with PostgreSQL 7.4 under W2K SP4 and Cygwin
> (current as of 2 or 3 weeks ago). The server is running locally.
>
> If I attempt to add an column of type serial or bigserial to a table,
> the operation fails with a message telling me that adding an column with
> a default value is not implemented. What is really weird is that one
> can, in fact, add a column with a default value, like an int4 with a
> default value or 0. The problem does not arise if the serial (or
> bigserial) column is created when the table is created (as a part of
> CREATE TABLE).
>
> Yours,
> David
>
> ---
> Dr. David E. Sigeti
> Phone: 505-667-9239
> E-mail: sigeti(at)lanl(dot)gov
> Surface mail: X-8, MS-F645, Los Alamos National Laboratory,
> Los Alamos, NM 87545 USA
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives?
>
> http://archives.postgresql.org

Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:
> You cannot add a serial column after table creation time in PostgreSQL.

But you can do the following from the query editor:

ALTER TABLE table ADD column INTEGER;
CREATE SEQUENCE table_column_seq;
ALTER TABLE table ALTER column SET DEFAULT nextval('"table_column_seq"'::text);

If you want the column to be NOT NULL as well, you will have to
populate that column for all the rows and then do:

ALTER TABLE table ALTER column SET NOT NULL;

Ian

> Chris
>
> David Sigeti wrote:
>
> > Dear Pgadmin Folks,
> >
> > I am using pgadminIII 1.0.2 with PostgreSQL 7.4 under W2K SP4 and Cygwin
> > (current as of 2 or 3 weeks ago). The server is running locally.
> >
> > If I attempt to add an column of type serial or bigserial to a table,
> > the operation fails with a message telling me that adding an column with
> > a default value is not implemented. What is really weird is that one
> > can, in fact, add a column with a default value, like an int4 with a
> > default value or 0. The problem does not arise if the serial (or
> > bigserial) column is created when the table is created (as a part of
> > CREATE TABLE).
> >
> > Yours,
> > David
> >
> > ---
> > Dr. David E. Sigeti
> > Phone: 505-667-9239
> > E-mail: sigeti(at)lanl(dot)gov
> > Surface mail: X-8, MS-F645, Los Alamos National Laboratory,
> > Los Alamos, NM 87545 USA
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> > TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives?
> >
> > http://archives.postgresql.org
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to majordomo(at)postgresql(dot)org
>

David Sigeti wrote:

> Dear Pgadmin Folks,
>
> I am using pgadminIII 1.0.2 with PostgreSQL 7.4 under W2K SP4 and
> Cygwin (current as of 2 or 3 weeks ago). The server is running locally.
>
> If I attempt to add an column of type serial or bigserial to a table,
> the operation fails with a message telling me that adding an column
> with a default value is not implemented. What is really weird is that
> one can, in fact, add a column with a default value, like an int4 with
> a default value or 0. The problem does not arise if the serial (or
> bigserial) column is created when the table is created (as a part of
> CREATE TABLE).
>
serial isn't a true datatype but a keyword that can be used only at
creation time. Still, pgAdmin3 should create the commands necessary for
this to make life easier; I added this as a TODO item.

Regards,
Andreas

> serial isn't a true datatype but a keyword that can be used only at
> creation time. Still, pgAdmin3 should create the commands necessary for
> this to make life easier; I added this as a TODO item.

The problem will be recording the dependency properly in pg_depend...

Chris

Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:

>> serial isn't a true datatype but a keyword that can be used only at
>> creation time. Still, pgAdmin3 should create the commands necessary
>> for this to make life easier; I added this as a TODO item.
>
>
> The problem will be recording the dependency properly in pg_depend...

That's no real problem, just an issue that should be thought of; thanks
for mentioning.

Regards,
Andreas

At 12:21 PM 12/10/2003 +0100, Andreas Pflug wrote:

>David Sigeti wrote:
>
>>I am using pgadminIII 1.0.2 with PostgreSQL 7.4 under W2K SP4 and Cygwin
>>(current as of 2 or 3 weeks ago). The server is running locally.
>>
>>If I attempt to add an column of type serial or bigserial to a table, the
>>operation fails with a message telling me that adding an column with a
>>default value is not implemented. What is really weird is that one can,
>>in fact, add a column with a default value, like an int4 with a default
>>value or 0. The problem does not arise if the serial (or bigserial)
>>column is created when the table is created (as a part of CREATE TABLE).
>serial isn't a true datatype but a keyword that can be used only at
>creation time. Still, pgAdmin3 should create the commands necessary for
>this to make life easier; I added this as a TODO item.

Adding this functionality would be great but I suggest that the error
message be changed right away as it is seriously misleading.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to help me out.

Yours,
David

---
Dr. David E. Sigeti
Phone: 505-667-9239
E-mail: sigeti(at)lanl(dot)gov
Surface mail: X-8, MS-F645, Los Alamos National Laboratory,
Los Alamos, NM 87545 USA

David Sigeti wrote:

> At 12:21 PM 12/10/2003 +0100, Andreas Pflug wrote:
>
>> David Sigeti wrote:
>>
>>> I am using pgadminIII 1.0.2 with PostgreSQL 7.4 under W2K SP4 and
>>> Cygwin (current as of 2 or 3 weeks ago). The server is running
>>> locally.
>>>
>>> If I attempt to add an column of type serial or bigserial to a
>>> table, the operation fails with a message telling me that adding an
>>> column with a default value is not implemented. What is really
>>> weird is that one can, in fact, add a column with a default value,
>>> like an int4 with a default value or 0.
>>
pgAdmin breaks this into two steps for you; have a look at the SQL page.

>>> The problem does not arise if the serial (or bigserial) column is
>>> created when the table is created (as a part of CREATE TABLE).
>>
>> serial isn't a true datatype but a keyword that can be used only at
>> creation time. Still, pgAdmin3 should create the commands necessary
>> for this to make life easier; I added this as a TODO item.
>
>
> Adding this functionality would be great but I suggest that the error
> message be changed right away as it is seriously misleading.
>
The error message originates from the backend. I agree that this might
be confusing to newbies, who don't know that serial actually is int4
default nextval('...') (currently pgAdmin3 doesn't either :-)

I'm forwarding this to pgsql-hackers.

Regards,
Andreas