Question

i have an existing mysql table with the id column defined as primary, and auto-increment set as true. now, i would like to know if i can set the auto-increment to start from a predefined value, say 5678, instead of starting off from 1.

I would also like to know if i can set the steps for auto-incrementing, say increase by 15 each for each new record insertion (instead of the default increment value of 1).

Note- i am using phpmyadmin to play with the db, and i have many tables but only one db.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You can also use the server-system-variables:

auto_increment_increment

and

auto_increment_offset

This will allow you to increase the offset by other values than 1 (e.g. 15) each time.
If you start from a different value using the same offset on a different server. This will allow you to keep tables on different servers that can be merged without keys overlapping.

e.g.

(inc = 15 offset = 1)          (inc=15 offset = 2)
table1 on server A             table1 on server B
-----------------------------------------------------
id     name                    id    name
1      bill                    2     john
16     monica                  17    claire 
....

This can be very useful.

Because the main usage is to have the same table on different servers behave in a different way, it is a server setting and not a table setting.