"INSERT INTO" Statements with INDENTITY Columns

This section describes what will happen if you try to insert rows with values for GENERATED ALWAYS AS IDENTITY columns.

An INDENTITY column is a special column in a table that is defined to have its values automatically added with a sequence number generator. An INDENTITY column is normally used for the primary key column in a table. For example, the ID column in the Profile table created in a previous tutorial is an INDENTITY column.

If an IDENTITY column is defined with "GENERATED ALWAYS AS IDENTITY" and you try to add values to this column in INSERT statements, you will get an error as shown in the sample program below:

/* DerbyInsertIdentity.java
 * Copyright (c) HerongYang.com. All Rights Reserved.
 */
import java.sql.*;
public class DerbyInsertIdentity {
  public static void main(String [] args) {
    Connection con = null;
    try {
      con = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:derby://localhost/TestDB");
      Statement sta = con.createStatement();

// insert a single row
      int count = sta.executeUpdate(
        "INSERT INTO Profile"
        + " (ID, FirstName, LastName, ModTime)"
        + " VALUES (1001, 'Herong', 'Yang', '2017-04-01')");
      System.out.println("Number of rows inserted: "+count);

      sta.close();
      con.close();
    } catch (Exception e) {
      System.err.println("Exception: "+e.getMessage());
    }
  }
}

Here is the error message from this program:

Exception: Attempt to modify an identity column 'ID'.

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) Introduction

 JDK (Java SE) Installation

 Installing and Running Derby (Java DB)

 Derby (Java DB) JDBC Driver

 Derby (Java DB) JDBC DataSource Objects

Derby (Java DB) - DML Statements

 Tables with Primary Key Column "GENERATED ... AS IDENTITY"

 "INSERT INTO" Statements

"INSERT INTO" Statements with INDENTITY Columns

 Handling Date and Timestamp Values

 "UPDATE" Statements

 "DELETE FROM" Statements

 Derby (Java DB) - ResultSet Objects of Queries

 Derby (Java DB) - PreparedStatement

 Summary of JDBC Drivers and Database Servers

 Using Connection Pool with JDBC

 Archived Tutorials

 References

 Full Version in PDF/EPUB