CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidsqlsqlite
ctcuff
ctcuff

Reputation: 93

Should primary key ever be reset?

Not sure if this has already been answered, and this is kind of a dumb question, but I'm kinda new to using SQL in android and I've made a simple task app using the language. In the app, I added a feature to delete all tasks. When I create a new one, the primary key keeps counting up. Now, there's nothing wrong with the app or the code or anything, but if all the tasks are deleted, should I reset the primary key, or is it bad practice to do so? If not, will it ever become large enough to provoke a crash?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 67

Answers (2)

Tim Biegeleisen
Tim Biegeleisen

Reputation: 522712

From the SQLite documentation:

Except for WITHOUT ROWID tables, all rows within SQLite tables have a 64-bit signed integer key that uniquely identifies the row within its table.

How big is the largest 64 bit number? It is 9,223,372,036,854,775,807. This number is so large, that it is probably doubtful you will ever exceed it, unless you are doing very frequent and massive inserts. Actually, you might run out of storage space before you insert so many rows to even come close to this number.

Upvotes: 0

Oleksi
Oleksi

Reputation: 13097

I would generally keep it increment because it can simplify certain things like database backup/restores, and replication to other database nodes. It makes things more predictable when your rows are always unique by id.

Upvotes: 2

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