Populating a primary key column

Hi:

I have a table that has 3 million rows. The table does not currently have a primary key defined. I want to add an ID column which will contain an increasing sequential number and use it for the primary key. I was wondering what will be the quickest way to populate this column.

Thanks,

Una.

probably a PL/SQL procedure

something like

a for loop which loops 3 million times
and update table set x=yy where rownum=index of for loop

Pando ,
you're right but I think probably there's no need of PL/SQL

I found this
(from Oracle 8i SQL Reference
2 - Basic elements of Oracle SQL)

...
..
"You can also use ROWNUM to assign unique values to each row of a table, as in
this example:
UPDATE tabx
SET col1 = ROWNUM;"
..
..

I hope this is a solution

Regards

I wonder if that would work for a sequence.nextval, I would guess it does. My databases are down or I'd try it. A sequence is probablly more what you're looking for as opposed to rownum.

update table set newkey = newsequence.nextval;

test it out on a test table first to see that it actually gives each row an increasing number instead of all the same.

edit
--

er, wait, i suppose rownum would work just the same then you start the future sequence at the max value or maybe you can just keep inserting the rownum...

After the update, you need to export and import the table to avoid row chaining.