It seems to me like its always a good idea, but is there ever a case where you are better off not having this in table?
Share
Sign Up to our social questions and Answers Engine to ask questions, answer people’s questions, and connect with other people.
Login to our social questions & Answers Engine to ask questions answer people’s questions & connect with other people.
Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link and will create a new password via email.
Please briefly explain why you feel this question should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this answer should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this user should be reported.
It seems to me like its always a good idea, but is there ever a case where you are better off not having this in table?
In my experience, almost never. (For a “speed matters, I’m just inserting and don’t really care about retrieval at this point” style of application, perhaps.)
Whilst you might conceivably never use the ID field, it’s nearly always wise to have one happily AUTO_INCREMENTing away, because one day you might need one. (You could of course simply do an ‘ALTER..’ to add one, but that’s besides the point.)