Details
Docs: Improvement
Resolved
Minor
Description
When using Zend_Db_Pdo_Mysql to describe a table, the returned values do not intuitively describe auto_increment columns. Looking at the code I was able to deduce that IDENTITY: true denotes MySQL's EXTRA: auto_increment fields.
The documentation does mention this here:
IDENTITY (boolean) True if the column uses an auto-generated value.
It took me a while to find that, but wouldn't it be much easier and more self-explanatory to just say
AUTO_GENERATED (boolean) True if the column uses an auto-generated value.
?
The terminology related to surrogate keys varies widely between RDBMS brands. This makes it hard to do anything in a standard or predictable way. There is no such thing as "self-explanatory" or "intuitive" in cases like this. The best that can be achieved is "idiomatic"; that is, to use a term familiar to users of one RDBMS or the other.
I chose to use the term "IDENTITY" because it's the only term used by more than one RDBMS brand.
- MySQL uses the term "AUTO_INCREMENT".
- PostgreSQL uses the term "SERIAL".
- DB2 and Microsoft both use the term "IDENTITY".
- Oracle uses a "SEQUENCE" object.
I chose to use the term "IDENTITY" because it's the only term used by more than one RDBMS brand.