Author Table

The author table stores the author information. The author table diagram shows the column properties of the table.

• The auth# column is the primary key for an author. The Identity attribute guarantees that a unique number will be generated for each new author added to the table. The identity seed and identity increment are 1. The first auth# to be assigned is 1, and each subsequently added auth# will be incremented by 1.
• The fname and lname columns allow 128 characters, but the varchar data type ensures that the storage size is the actual length of the data entered. Both fields are required, that is, null values are not allowed. Both columns are registered for full-text search. CML and Full-Text Search describes full-text search in detail.
• The timestamp column holds a database-wide unique number. The value in the timestamp column is updated every time a row containing a timestamp column is inserted or updated. A table can have only one timestamp column. The timestamp provides a way to incrementally rebuild the full-text index on the table. All the CML database tables registered for full-text search (author, subject, and title) have a timestamp column. Null values are not allowed. Storage size is 8 bytes.