Efficient way of incrementing a value

Anon

I'm looking to increment the value of a db field, but would like to find a more efficient way than the
pull value from db
increment
put value back in db.

Is there a direct SQL single command to do this?

Thanks.

Anon

Well, the easiest way is to set the field as an auto_increment field in the table.

brandonschnell

UPDATE table SET field = field + 1 WHERE id = '$id';

Anon

One of which says (for normalization purposes) is to not store calculated data in your DB. This data is really "derived" data and can easily fall out of sync with the rest of your table.

It is always better to compute these values apart from the DB table to avoid major headaches later on.

Now I know it may be easier to store this calculated data in a field. But there really is no point in doing this. This would be similiar to storing the number of records in a table when you could just as well query the table (via the SQL count function) to get the same value. And you would not be wasting space in your table to boot.

I'm no DB expert, but I hope that helps.

Anon

Oh, heh, that was simple.

Thanks. (feeling a little silly)

Anon

The value that is being calculated has no ties to other fields in the database. It is a value that will change over time, again with no other ties to other fields in the database. There is no data duplication going on here :-)