[thelist] Oracle Sequences: was MySQL Tables for weblog

[Jane Williams]

On 17 Mar 2002 at 10:38, rudy wrote:

> this is a bit offtopic, so there's a tip...

Is it? Hmm, Oracle not Web.. yes, I suppose it is unless you use an Oracle backend
DB.

> > You did know that if you export and re-import your
> > Oracle DB (so as to compress and tidy up)...
>
> like a defrag?  is that even necessary?

Well, it can be a good idea for all sorts of reasons, but that's getting way off-topic, I
suspect. We were moving to a new server when it hit us.

> i'm guessing your sequences started over again with low numbers, and then
> when you started inserting records, there were collisions with existing
> records?

There would have been, yes.

> you'd have to allow for this by also resetting the sequence back up to
> where it was...

Quite. Finger-poking and messing around. And we didn't know it was going to happen
until it did.

> there's only one insert statement in your application, right?  i mean, one
> per table?

(laughs hysterically), no, a few more than that. This was a while ago, anyway, but it
taught me a few things I won't forget about sequences. And about using things just
because they're new without checking for the bug list first.