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Postgres auto increment BIGSERIAL | An Introduction

BIGSERIAL is a data type used to define a column in order to automatically generate unique 64-bit integer value each time we insert a new row into the table. Interestingly, SERIAL datatype is a shorthand notation for for integer and auto-increment keywords.

The main difference between BIGSERIAL and SERIAL datatype is that the former allows a larger range of values. This comes in handy when we need very large numbers of unique identifiers.

According to our experts, we can use BIGSERIAL in PostgreSQL, by defining a column with this data type as the primary key of a table.

For instance, the SQL statement seen below will create a new table called Employees with an id column that we are setting as BIGSERIAL primary key:

CREATE TABLE employees ( id bigserial primary key, name varchar(255), email varchar(255) );

As per the above statement, each time a new row is inserted into the Employees table, PostgreSQL will generate a new unique value for the id column. Furthermore, this value will be bigger than the previously generated values for the other rows in the table.

For instance, if we run the following SQL statement, PostgreSQL will generate a new row and add Bob Smith in the employee column and add a new unique value for the id column.

INSERT INTO employees (name, email) VALUES ('Bob Smith', 'bobsmith@bobcares.com');


Ar the end of the day, the BIGSERIAL data type in Postgresql helps us add unique auto incremented values.

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Conclusion

In summary, our Support Techs demonstrated how to use BIGSERIAL data type for auto increment in Postgre.