The gaps are not really expected. It is set once only. Its about printing packing slips for ecommerce orders. We have the ORDER ID sequence, but so many different stations are accessing these orders, if my station print the next 100 orders from the que, id like to give them values starting from MAX(print_number_sequence so far) AND +1, +2, +3, .... +100.
I hope this clears it better. I think a sequence can work. My concern was performance, as in the actual programming LOOP, querying the max field, assigning the row number, reissuing the max field. A sequence i guess, would perform better than a regular table index?
I have a column in my table which is incrementally updated.
Try to give us more details...
Does the column need have contiguous values or are "gaps" ok? That is, does it have to be 1,2,3,4,...,N-1,N or is it ok to have something like 1,3,4,7,...,M (where M>N) for N rows?
Is the value updated every time the row is changed, or is it set once only?
If gaps are OK, then a sequence is a simple answer.
