In the last episode (Nov 07), Jeremy Zawodny said:
> > In Oracle for example, a ROWID is the unique address of a row in
> > the database. Every row, unique key or not has a unique address. Is
> > there such a thing in MySQL?
>
> No. If there was it'd be documented. But at least with MyISAM
> tables, MySQL cannot guarantee the "address" (or row number) of a
> row. An ALTER/REPAIR/OPTIMIZE may reorder the rows.
A ROWID is actually a packed representation of datafile, segment, block
and row, so anything that rebuilds a table in Oracle changes ROWIDs
too. They're not meant to be a permanent pointer. MySQL could
probably do the same thing by returning a 4 or 8-byte offset into the
.MYI file for MyISAM tables. You would have to return the primary key
for BDB tables, and I don't know enough about InnoDB's layout to guess.
Basically, whatever pointer non-primary indexes use to locate records
can be called a ROWID.
> > ROWIDs are extremely useful for guaranteeing that you are
> > manipulating the exact row that you think you are.
>
> So I've been told.
They've got an O(1) access time, so they're also useful for remembering
sets of rows in a multi-query operation; pull the ROWIDs once, then use
"WHERE ROWID in ( rowidlist )" later.
--
Dan Nelson
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
MySQL General Mailing List
For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql
To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
