I've been using the debian package of postgresql (7.0-release-1) and I've been able to say something like: create table blah ( id serial ); Note how serial is all lowercase. I have since compiled postgresql 7.0.2 on my friends box and installed it in my home directory so I could play w/ it. I was surprised when I couldn't build my table w/ the above statement, but if I were to do: create table blah ( id SERIAL ); (note how serial is all uppercase, now) it works. Can anyone explain why this happens? I guess for the time being, I'll capitalize every instance of 'serial' when I create tables, but this just got me curious. thanks!