Posted by bill on 03/28/07 13:50

In an application I am writing the user can define a series of
steps to be followed. I save them in a sql database using the
field "order" (a smallint) as the primary key.
(there are in the range of 20 steps)

On the admin page the steps are listed, in "order" order and the
user can create new steps and assign an order and all is well.

The problem may come in using a renumber function which should
take the steps in their current order and reassign the "order"
key, assigning each set an "order" that is the prior "order" + 10.

In other databases I have worked with this is a major pain
because as soon as you save a record the order may change.
OTOH, in mysql it appears that if you do a select for the whole
table you have them all in memory and can change the value of the
field "order" without having to worry about getting that record
again and then save the whole table.

Is that correct ?

bill

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