Auto Increment Text Field

Anon

I need to know if it's possible to have MySQL auto increment a text field. I have a field that contains 5 CHAR 'AAAAB' then 'AAAAC','AAAAD' etc... In that stupid excel program excel can figure out that this is a sequence and starts auto incrementing to the next value is there anyway for MySQL to do this?

mithril

Nope, the auto_increment identifer is restricted to the TINYINT, SMALLINT, MEDIUMINT, INT, and BIGINT datatypes. You're either going to have to generate the sequence increment yourself, or use one of the INT types. Using an INT is a much better way of generating a unique key anyways.

geoff

[deleted]

And a side note: there is no reliable way to generate sequence numbers yourself in a multi-user environment, so changing to a database-generated integer value is really the only choice.

Anon

there is no reliable way to generate
sequence numbers yourself in a multi-user
environment

Well, you could create a table containing a sequence-number column, and lock the table before updating the number. That would probably be reliable enough, but the impact on performance would be horrendous.

I mention this not to recommend it any any way, but rather because so many people think of doing it this way it's worth specifically warning against.

[deleted]

Completely correct and well spotted as usual Kirk!

Rafael_Setragni

Anon;619191 wrote:
I need to know if it's possible to have MySQL auto increment a text field. I have a field that contains 5 CHAR 'AAAAB' then 'AAAAC','AAAAD' etc... In that stupid excel program excel can figure out that this is a sequence and starts auto incrementing to the next value is there anyway for MySQL to do this?

I agree with you. Sometimes we cross with those business rules, which are not "the best technical way" to do this, but still a business rule and MUST be obeyed.

On your case, be happy! To do a text incremental is piece of cake:

select HEX('abc'), UNHEX(HEX('abc')+1);

Done. 🙂

NogDog

Rafael Setragni;11054759 wrote:
I agree with you. Sometimes we cross with those business rules, which are not "the best technical way" to do this, but still a business rule and MUST be obeyed.

On your case, be happy! To do a text incremental is piece of cake:

select HEX('abc'), UNHEX(HEX('abc')+1);

Done. 🙂

Do you realize you just responded to an over 14-year-old thread? (Now I'm wondering how you even came across it.) :rolleyes:

dalecosp

[thread=10220471]Bump Reports Can Go Here[/thread] 😃

NogDog wrote:
wondering how ...

UTSL? (meaning #2)....