Does Postgres Support Autonumbers?

[vz]

I just ported over a db from access and I am having problems wiht a table that has an autonumber. How do you know if its supported or not and if its chosen to be an autonumber?
Thanks

 

[rycamor]

PostgreSQL uses a different concept to handle this problem: sequences. Sequences are more powerful than a simple autonumber, because you can make a sequence of numerical increment, such incrementing by 2 for each record.

http://www.postgresql.org/idocs/index.php?sql-commands.html

has a list of the SQL commands for PostgreSQL, and CREATE SEQUENCE is about halfway down on the list.

Actually, I just found that there is another datatype called "serial" that might accomplish this also. See

http://www.postgresql.org/idocs/index.php?datatype.html#DATATYPE-NUMERIC

and look for references to the Serial datatype.

 

[vz]

Do you or anyone know how this is done? When u port over a database do u know if the sequence is automatically created? If not should I do this before or after I port?
Thanks