Union Auto Generate Primary Key

This primary key column is known as an identity or auto increment column. When a new row is inserted into the auto-increment column, an auto-generated sequential integer is used for the insert. For example, if the value of the first row is 1, then the value of the second row is 2, and so on.

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APPLIES TO: SQL Server 2016 and later Azure SQL Database Azure Synapse Analytics (SQL DW) Parallel Data Warehouse

You can define a primary key in SQL Server by using SQL Server Management Studio or Transact-SQL. Creating a primary key automatically creates a corresponding unique clustered index, or a nonclustered index if specified as such.

Before You Begin

Limitations and Restrictions

  • A table can contain only one PRIMARY KEY constraint.

  • All columns defined within a PRIMARY KEY constraint must be defined as NOT NULL. If nullability is not specified, all columns participating in a PRIMARY KEY constraint have their nullability set to NOT NULL.

Security

Permissions

Creating a new table with a primary key requires CREATE TABLE permission in the database and ALTER permission on the schema in which the table is being created.

Creating a primary key in an existing table requires ALTER permission on the table.

Using SQL Server Management Studio

To create a primary key

  1. In Object Explorer, right-click the table to which you want to add a unique constraint, and click Design.
  2. In Table Designer, click the row selector for the database column you want to define as the primary key. If you want to select multiple columns, hold down the CTRL key while you click the row selectors for the other columns.
  3. Right-click the row selector for the column and select Set Primary Key.

Caution

If you want to redefine the primary key, any relationships to the existing primary key must be deleted before the new primary key can be created. A message will warn you that existing relationships will be automatically deleted as part of this process.

A primary key column is identified by a primary key symbol in its row selector.

If a primary key consists of more than one column, duplicate values are allowed in one column, but each combination of values from all the columns in the primary key must be unique.

If you define a compound key, the order of columns in the primary key matches the order of columns as shown in the table. However, you can change the order of columns after the primary key is created. For more information, see Modify Primary Keys.

Using Transact-SQL

To create a primary key in an existing table

The following example creates a primary key on the column TransactionID in the AdventureWorks database.

To create a primary key in a new table

The following example creates a table and defines a primary key on the column TransactionID in the AdventureWorks database.

To create a primary key with clustered index in a new table

The following example creates a table and defines a primary key on the column CustomerID and a clustered index on TransactionID in the AdventureWorks database.

See Also

Union auto generate primary key in mysql

The AUTO_INCREMENT attribute can be used to generate a unique identity for new rows:

Which returns:

No value was specified for the AUTO_INCREMENT column, so MySQL assigned sequence numbers automatically. You can also explicitly assign 0 to the column to generate sequence numbers, unless the NO_AUTO_VALUE_ON_ZERO SQL mode is enabled. For example:

If the column is declared NOT NULL, it is also possible to assign NULL to the column to generate sequence numbers. For example:

When you insert any other value into an AUTO_INCREMENT column, the column is set to that value and the sequence is reset so that the next automatically generated value follows sequentially from the largest column value. For example:

Updating an existing AUTO_INCREMENT column value in an InnoDB table does not reset the AUTO_INCREMENT sequence as it does for MyISAM and NDB tables.

You can retrieve the most recent automatically generated AUTO_INCREMENT value with the LAST_INSERT_ID() SQL function or the mysql_insert_id() C API function. These functions are connection-specific, so their return values are not affected by another connection which is also performing inserts.

Union Auto Generate Primary Key Of Life

Use the smallest integer data type for the AUTO_INCREMENT column that is large enough to hold the maximum sequence value you will need. When the column reaches the upper limit of the data type, the next attempt to generate a sequence number fails. Use the UNSIGNED attribute if possible to allow a greater range. For example, if you use TINYINT, the maximum permissible sequence number is 127. For TINYINT UNSIGNED, the maximum is 255. See Section 11.1.2, “Integer Types (Exact Value) - INTEGER, INT, SMALLINT, TINYINT, MEDIUMINT, BIGINT” for the ranges of all the integer types.

For a multiple-row insert, LAST_INSERT_ID() and mysql_insert_id() actually return the AUTO_INCREMENT key from the first of the inserted rows. This enables multiple-row inserts to be reproduced correctly on other servers in a replication setup.

To start with an AUTO_INCREMENT value other than 1, set that value with CREATE TABLE or ALTER TABLE, like this:

For information about AUTO_INCREMENT usage specific to InnoDB, see Section 14.6.1.6, “AUTO_INCREMENT Handling in InnoDB”.

  • For MyISAM tables, you can specify AUTO_INCREMENT on a secondary column in a multiple-column index. In this case, the generated value for the AUTO_INCREMENT column is calculated as MAX(auto_increment_column) + 1 WHERE prefix=given-prefix. This is useful when you want to put data into ordered groups.

    Which returns:

    In this case (when the AUTO_INCREMENT column is part of a multiple-column index), AUTO_INCREMENT values are reused if you delete the row with the biggest AUTO_INCREMENT value in any group. This happens even for MyISAM tables, for which AUTO_INCREMENT values normally are not reused.

  • If the AUTO_INCREMENT column is part of multiple indexes, MySQL generates sequence values using the index that begins with the AUTO_INCREMENT column, if there is one. For example, if the animals table contained indexes PRIMARY KEY (grp, id) and INDEX (id), MySQL would ignore the PRIMARY KEY for generating sequence values. As a result, the table would contain a single sequence, not a sequence per grp value.

Union Auto Generate Primary Keyboard

More information about AUTO_INCREMENT is available here:

Union Auto Generate Primary Key Value

  • How to assign the AUTO_INCREMENT attribute to a column: Section 13.1.17, “CREATE TABLE Statement”, and Section 13.1.7, “ALTER TABLE Statement”.

  • How AUTO_INCREMENT behaves depending on the NO_AUTO_VALUE_ON_ZERO SQL mode: Section 5.1.10, “Server SQL Modes”.

  • How to use the LAST_INSERT_ID() function to find the row that contains the most recent AUTO_INCREMENT value: Section 12.15, “Information Functions”.

  • Setting the AUTO_INCREMENT value to be used: Section 5.1.7, “Server System Variables”.

  • AUTO_INCREMENT and replication: Section 17.4.1.1, “Replication and AUTO_INCREMENT”.

  • Server-system variables related to AUTO_INCREMENT (auto_increment_increment and auto_increment_offset) that can be used for replication: Section 5.1.7, “Server System Variables”.