--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Ann Harrison <aharrison@...> wrote:

>
> > --- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, "karolbieniaszewski" <liviuslivius@> wrote:
> >>
> >> is some API to get generator value?
> >> or only possible way is
> >> select GEN_ID(gen_name, 0) from RDB$Database
> >>
> >> i ask because this is stupid to start transaction to get non transactional object value
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 3:56 PM, emb_blaster <EMB_Blaster@...> wrote:
>
> >  AFAICR, no. There's not.
> >
> >  If you are using ISQL, you could use "SHOW GENERATOR xxxxx;" or "SHOW SEQUENCE xxxxxx;", or yet "SHOW GENERATORS;" or "SHOW SEQUENCES;" to list all. (see http://www.firebirdsql.org/refdocs/langrefupd21-ddl-sequence.html)
>
> Any of those statements will either open a transaction or use the DDL
> transaction.
> >
> >  Also, I can agree that seems make no sense at all that. But I've learned to do not call stupid something I did not understand at all. Maybe in the time it was made, a "no transaction request" would make no sense too.
> > So, if someone else could explain, I would be glad to learn too. But don't think this is a bug or a missing feature at all. :)
> >
>
> Since you can neither write nor read the contents of the database
> without an open
> transaction, it may be that the designers assumed that there would be
> a transaction
> started or about to start when someone wanted the current contents of
> a generator.
> Note that in a multi-user application, the value returned by GEN_ID
> (<generator>,0)
> may well not be the value most recently stored by the transaction that
> gets the value.
>
> Good luck,
>
> Ann
>

Generator is non transactional and next unique value is generated by mutex locking for multiuser use. And starting database context transaction is unnecessary, time costs, resource costs ..

and i say "stupid" in condition as "unnecessary"
may English is bad so sorry for some mistakes..

Karol Bieniaszewski