Re: Is a SERIAL column a "black box", or not?

[mark(at)mark(dot)mielke(dot)cc]

On Sun, Apr 30, 2006 at 11:06:05AM +0200, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> If it's not obvious yet :-P, I'd be in favour of having SERIAL as
> black-box as possible, and then just use manual CREATE SEQUENCE and
> DEFAULT nextval() for when you need a more advanced case. But that's as
> seen from a user perspective, without regard for backend complexity.

That's where I sit as well.

SERIAL as a macro has no value to me. I'd rather write it out in full,
and make it obvious to the caller, what I'm doing. This way, I get to
choose the sequence name instead of having it generated for me, and
the GRANT expression makes more sense.

If SERIAL generated an 'anonymous' SEQUENCE, that was a real black
box, that had the same permissions as the table, I'd be tempted to use
it again.

I also see the db_dump example as proving more that the box isn't
black enough, than proving that the black box approach is wrong.

Cheers,
mark

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