This doesn't really cover the JDBC driver, but tells a little more about the serial type:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/datatype.html#DATATYPE-SERIAL It looks like declaring something to be serial sets up a sequence, too? I'm always wary of the word "equivalent" in tech docs, though. I've gotten burned by that before. (The old NeXTstep documentation said calling "new" was the equivalent of "alloc" and then "init" -- but new didn't call alloc then init.) I can create a scratch DB later and see what it does ... /dev/mrg
