On Saturday 11. June 2011 17.14.21 Tom Lane wrote: > Guillaume Lelarge <guilla...@lelarge.info> writes: > > On Sat, 2011-06-11 at 17:01 +0200, Leif Biberg Kristensen wrote: > >> Can anybody tell me why this doesn't work? > >> pgslekt=> CREATE SEQUENCE sources_source_id_seq START WITH (SELECT > >> MAX(source_id) FROM sources); > >> ERROR: syntax error at or near "(" > > > > Because it's not supported. The START clause expects a value, not a > > subquery. > > More generally, there are no "utility" statements in PG that accept > non-constant expressions in their parameters. (A utility statement is > anything other than SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE.) > > There's been occasional speculation about changing that, but it would > take a significant amount of work I think.
Thanks for the explanation, Tom. Presumably this means that I can't automatically patch a live database to use a sequence unless I build a special function for the update. With 9.x I could use the new DO syntax, but that isn't yet deployed everywhere. Unless there's a way around it? regards, Leif -- Sent via pgsql-sql mailing list (pgsql-sql@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-sql