Re: Keys larger than 2 Billion

It would be interesting to here a little about the application. This would mean 1 row inserted every second for 63 years or 10 rows a second for over 6 years - day and night. Interesting. For a project like this you should be able to make Informix extend their XPS engine with a serial datatype with 64 bit integers. Frank Dickinson <frdi@gate.net> wrote: :We have an application where we want to plan for some of our :tables to have more than 2 billion rows. Currently we have a :primary key that is a SERIAL type column, but this will only :handle unique IDs up to 2 billion rows. We have thought about :having a composite primary key with the first value being a :julian day or some kind of month and a second column that is :serial. Another idea is to handle incrementing ourselves by :storing a current value in some control table, but this will add :more overhead to an insert. :Does anyone have any input on this? Has anyone seen anything :like this done? I am sure that there are probably a hundred :ways to do this, I am looking for a good discussion of the pros :and cons of different approaches. :Any help would be appreciated. :Thanks, :Frank Dickinson (frdi@gate.net) :====================================================== :Metal forged of the hottest flame is strongest! :====================================================== Nils.Myklebust@idg.no <- New E-mail adress NM Data AS, P.O.Box 9090 Gronland, N-0133 Oslo, Norway My opinions are those of my company