Updating a table to have an ID

Question

Hello,
I have a table (with data) to which I have add a column to host the ID's.
I made this column nullable, I would like to populate it meaningful and then chan it to "not null".
My prob now is how to populate it. I would like to start by 1 and increment it by one but I do I do it in a table which already has data?
Regards

Answer 1

term, how do you plan to populate the ID column going forward?
Another way to reach a similar result to what Tony suggested would be to use a sequence generator
update target set id = sequence_name.nextval;
You could then use this sequence in your future insert statements to populate the ID column or via a before insert trigger on the table.
Proof:
UT1 > update marktest
2 set fld2 = jit.MO_WO_SEQ.nextval;
4 rows updated.
UT1 > select * from marktest;
FLD1 FLD2 FLD3
one 7 06-SEP-05
222 8 06-SEP-05
3three 9 03-SEP-05
xx%y 10 25-JAN-06
UT1 > rollback;
Rollback complete.
UT1 > select * from marktest;
FLD1 FLD2 FLD3
one 1 06-SEP-05
222 2 06-SEP-05
3three 3 03-SEP-05
xx%y 2 25-JAN-06
HTH -- Mark D Powell --