postgres copy table to table - what to do with the serial? - postgresql

I have to tables with identical columns. In both cases the first column is called id and type of SERIAL.
I want to copy the content of the second to the first table. I want to copy everything except the id. If I do this:
INSERT INTO first
SELECT *
FROM second;
It will complain, because it will duplicate the id.
If I do this:
INSERT INTO first
SELECT 1col, 2col, 3col .... (every column except the id column, which I dont want to be copied)
FROM second;
It will complain because it tries to insert the value of the '1col' into id column.
ERROR: column "id" is of type bigint but expression is of type date
So the bottom line is I want copy EVERYTHING except the SERIAL value, which needs to be calculated by the receiving table. Any hint?

You were half way there.
INSERT INTO first (1col, 2col, 3col ....)
SELECT 1col, 2col, 3col ....
FROM second
Yes, you have to repeat all the columns. No, there's no way to say "all except id".

Related

How to backup whole table into a single field item?

I have few very small tables (a total of ~1000 rows) that I want to backup regularly into the same DB, to a single table. I know it sounds weird but hear me out.
Let's say that the tables I want to backup are named linux_commands, and windows_commands. These two tables have roughly: id (pkey), name, definition, config (jsonb), commands.
I want to back these up everyday into a table called commands_backup and I want this new table to have a date field, a field for windows_commands, and another one for linux_commands, so three columns in total. Each day, a script would run and write current date to date field, and then fetch whole linux_commands table and write it to related field in a single row, then do the same for windows_commands.
How would you setup something like this? Also, what is the best data type for storing whole data set in a single item?
In the target table, windows_commands and linux_commands should be type jsonb.
Then you can use:
INSERT INTO commands_backup VALUES (
current_date,
(SELECT jsonb_agg(to_jsonb(linux_commands)) FROM linux_commands),
(SELECT jsonb_agg(to_jsonb(windows_commands)) FROM windows_commands)
);

PostgreSQL id column not defined

I am new in PostgreSQL and I am working with this database.
I got a file which I imported, and I am trying to get rows with a certain ID. But the ID is not defined, as you can see it in this picture:
so how do I access this ID? I want to use an SQL command like this:
SELECT * from table_name WHERE ID = 1;
If any order of rows is ok for you, just add a row number according to the current arbitrary sort order:
CREATE SEQUENCE tbl_tbl_id_seq;
ALTER TABLE tbl ADD COLUMN tbl_id integer DEFAULT nextval('tbl_tbl_id_seq');
The new default value is filled in automatically in the process. You might want to run VACUUM FULL ANALYZE tbl to remove bloat and update statistics for the query planner afterwards. And possibly make the column your new PRIMARY KEY ...
To make it a fully fledged serial column:
ALTER SEQUENCE tbl_tbl_id_seq OWNED BY tbl.tbl_id;
See:
Creating a PostgreSQL sequence to a field (which is not the ID of the record)
What you see are just row numbers that pgAdmin displays, they are not really stored in the database.
If you want an artificial numeric primary key for the table, you'll have to create it explicitly.
For example:
CREATE TABLE mydata (
id integer GENERATED ALWAYS AS IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY,
obec text NOT NULL,
datum timestamp with time zone NOT NULL,
...
);
Then to copy the data from a CSV file, you would run
COPY mydata (obec, datum, ...) FROM '/path/to/csvfile' (FORMAT 'csv');
Then the id column is automatically filled.

Duplicate Key error when using INSERT DEFAULT

I am getting a duplicate key error, DB2 SQL Error: SQLCODE=-803, SQLSTATE=23505, when I try to INSERT records. The primary key is one column, INTEGER 4, Generated, and it is the first column.
the insert looks like this: INSERT INTO SCHEMA.TABLE1 values (DEFAULT, ?, ?, ...)
It's my understanding that using the value DEFAULT will just let DB2 auto-generate the key at the time of insert, which is what I want. This works most of the time, but sometimes/randomly I get the duplicate key error. Thoughts?
More specifically, I'm running against DB2 9.7.0.3, using Scriptella to copy a bunch of records from one database to another. Sometimes I can process a bunch with no problems, other times I'll get the error right away, other times after 2 records, or 20 records, or 30 records, etc. Does not seem to be a pattern, nor is it the same record every time. If I change the data to copy 1 record instead of a bunch, sometimes I'll get the error one time, then it's fine the next time.
I thought maybe some other process was inserting records during my batch program, and creating keys at the same time. However, the tables I'm copying TO should not have any other users/processes trying to INSERT records during this same time frame, although there could be READS happening.
Edit: adding create info:
Create table SCHEMA.TABLE1 (
SYSTEM_USER_KEY INTEGER NOT NULL
generated by default as identity (start with 1 increment by 1 cache 20),
COL2...,
)
alter table SCHEMA.TABLE1
add constraint SYSTEM_USER_SYSTEM_USER_KEY_IDX
Primary Key (SYSTEM_USER_KEY);
You most likely have records in your table with IDs that are bigger then the next value in your identity sequence. To find out what the current value your sequence is about at, run the following query.
select s.nextcachefirstvalue-s.cache, s.nextcachefirstvalue-s.increment
from syscat.COLIDENTATTRIBUTES as a inner join syscat.sequences as s on a.seqid=s.seqid
where a.tabschema='SCHEMA'
and a.TABNAME='TABLE1'
and a.COLNAME='SYSTEM_USER_KEY'
So basically what happened is that somehow you got records in your table with ids that are bigger then the current last value of your identity sequence. So sooner or later these ids will collide with identity generated ids.
There are different reasons on how this could have happened. One possibility is that data was loaded which already contained values for the id column or that records were inserted with an actual value for the ID. Another option is that the identity sequence was reset to start at a lower value than the max id in the table.
Whatever the cause, you may also want the fix:
SELECT MAX(<primary_key_column>) FROM onsite.forms;
ALTER TABLE <table> ALTER COLUMN <primary_key_column> RESTART WITH <number from previous query + 1>;

How can I copy an IDENTITY field?

I’d like to update some parameters for a table, such as the dist and sort key. In order to do so, I’ve renamed the old version of the table, and recreated the table with the new parameters (these can not be changed once a table has been created).
I need to preserve the id field from the old table, which is an IDENTITY field. If I try the following query however, I get an error:
insert into edw.my_table_new select * from edw.my_table_old;
ERROR: cannot set an identity column to a value [SQL State=0A000]
How can I keep the same id from the old table?
You can't INSERT data setting the IDENTITY columns, but you can load data from S3 using COPY command.
First you will need to create a dump of source table with UNLOAD.
Then simply use COPY with EXPLICIT_IDS parameter as described in Loading default column values:
If an IDENTITY column is included in the column list, the EXPLICIT_IDS
option must also be specified in the COPY command, or the COPY command
will fail. Similarly, if an IDENTITY column is omitted from the column
list, and the EXPLICIT_IDS option is specified, the COPY operation
will fail.
You can explicitly specify the columns, and ignore the identity column:
insert into existing_table (col1, col2) select col1, col2 from another_table;
Use ALTER TABLE APPEND twice, first time with IGNOREEXTRA and the second time with FILLTARGET.
If the target table contains columns that don't exist in the source
table, include FILLTARGET. The command fills the extra columns in the
source table with either the default column value or IDENTITY value,
if one was defined, or NULL.
It moves the columns from one table to another, extremely quickly; took me 4s for 1GB table in dc1.large node.
Appends rows to a target table by moving data from an existing source
table.
...
ALTER TABLE APPEND is usually much faster than a similar CREATE TABLE
AS or INSERT INTO operation because data is moved, not duplicated.
Faster and simpler than UNLOAD + COPY with EXPLICIT_IDS.

Using the serial datatype as a foreign key

Lets say that I have two tables.
The first is: table lists, with list_id SERIAL, list_name TEXT
The second table is, trivially, a table which says if the list is public: list_id INT, is_public INT
Obviously a bit of a contrived case, but I am planning out some tables and this seems to be an issue. If I insert a new list_name into table lists, then it'll give me a new serial number...but now I will need to use that serial number in the second table. Obviously in this case, you could simply add is_public to the first table, but in the case of a linking list where you have a compound key, you'll need to know the serial value that was returned.
How do people usually handle this? Do they get the return type from the insert using whatever system they're interacting with the database with?
One approach to this sort of thing is:
INSERT...
SELECT lastval()
INSERT...
INSERT into the first table, use lastval() to get the "value most recently obtained with nextval for any sequence" (in the current session), and then use that value to build your next INSERT.
There's also INSERT ... RETURNING:
The optional RETURNING clause causes INSERT to compute and return value(s) based on each row actually inserted. This is primarily useful for obtaining values that were supplied by defaults, such as a serial sequence number.
Using INSERT ... RETURNING id basically combines the first two steps above into one so you'd do:
INSERT ... RETURNING id
INSERT ...
where the second INSERT would use the id returned from the first INSERT.