I'd like to solicit feedback on PostgreSQL sequences, especially from Tore. When I added the code to generate PKs from sequences, I think I did so rather naively. I assumed sequences were sequences and essentially lifted the code from the Oracle PK generator. This was simple and easy to digest because it was so similar to Oracle.
Fast forward a couple years and now I've seen the use of the "serial" type to create an int field, a sequence, and set up the default value. There's nothing really magical about "serial" and it is very similar to what the PostgreSQL PK generator does now. What is different is the name of the sequence. Serial types created sequences named in a particular format, just as Cayenne does, but neither use the same format. This turns out not to be merely cosmetic. The dynamic language frameworks with their built-in ORMs can only integrate with a legacy DB if the sequences are named appropriately (i.e., I've yet to see one that will allow overriding the sequence name as Cayenne does). So, is it worth re-visiting the generator to create sequences named the same way that "serial" would? Should we simply modify the creation DDL to use the serial type (similar to MySQL)? Or should we consider it someone else's problem and continue with a "non-standard", but sound, PK creation strategy? -- Kevin Menard Servprise International, Inc. 800.832.3823 x308
