Sequence

A Sequence engine allows the creation of ascending or descending sequences of numbers with a given starting value, ending value and increment.

It creates completely virtual, ephemeral tables automatically when you need them. There is no way to create a Sequence table explicitly. Nor are they ever written to disk or create .frm files. They are read-only, transactional, and support XA.

To use a Sequence table, you simply select from it, as in

MariaDB [test]> SELECT * FROM seq_1_to_5;
+-----+
| seq |
+-----+
|   1 |
|   2 |
|   3 |
|   4 |
|   5 |
+-----+

To use a sequence in a statement, you select from the table named by a pattern seq_FROM_to_TO or seq_FROM_to_TO_step_STEP.

A sequence can go backward too. In this case the final value will always be 1, so that a descending sequence has the same values as an ascending sequence:

MariaDB [test]> SELECT * FROM seq_5_to_1_step_2;
+-----+
| seq |
+-----+
|   5 |
|   3 |
|   1 |
+-----+

This engine is particularly used in joins. For example, this query finds all prime numbers below 50:

MariaDB [test]> select seq from seq_2_to_50 s1 where 0 not in
     -> (select s1.seq % s2.seq from seq_2_to_50 s2 where s2.seq <= sqrt(s1.seq));
+-----+
| seq |
+-----+
|   2 |
|   3 |
|   5 |
|   7 |
|  11 |
|  13 |
|  17 |
|  19 |
|  23 |
|  29 |
|  31 |
|  37 |
|  41 |
|  43 |
|  47 |
+-----+

Sequence tables, while virtual, are still tables, so they must be in a database. This means that a default database must be selected (for example, via the USE command) to be able to query a Sequence table.

Resources

• Sometimes its the little things - Dean Ellis tries out the Sequence engine.
• MariaDB’s Sequence Storage Engine - Federico Razzoli writes more in-depth on the engine.