Hi Jason,

> I'm a MySQL user (I bet you all hear that a lot!) - I love MySQL, but
> wishing it had just half of what Firebird has. btw: I just learned about /
> discovered Firebird and think it just rocks!

Welcome! ;-)

> However, I do like the auto increment functionality in MySQL for Primary
> Key's - it seems to have this same functionality in Firebird I must create

a

> Trigger with the incremental code.

Generators - the object you use in the trigger - are far more powerful
than auto-inc columns. Besides, Firebird doesn't have a mechanism to
return the (new) value of a column, so if you need to establish a FK
relation, you cannot do that with an auto-inc column, nor with the trigger.

The usual way to do this, is to get the PK value for the parent (record)
to the client side, either by using a Stored Procedure, or a simple
SELECT GEN_ID(MyGenerator, 1) AS NEW_VALUE
FROM RDB$DATABASE

And use the value for both the parent PK and the FK column in any
child records.

Therefor, there is neither a need nor sensible use for auto-inc columns,
except for people who migrated ;-)

> Is this the case, or am I just no seeing things correctly? If the Trigger
> event is the way to get the auto-increments for my keys, then I would like
> to suggest for a near future release the concept of adding auto-increments
> directly by stating so in the Index, like MySQL.
>
> I can only imagine that this would also increase Insert performance

greatly

> also, as the Inserts won't have to respond to trigger events.

I doubt you can measure the difference.

With regards,

Martijn Tonies
Database Workbench - developer tool for InterBase, Firebird, MySQL & MS SQL
Server.
Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com