On Apr 30, 3:59 pm, F Tahbaz <ftah...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 1) How can I insert a column into my table DATA, and make it my
> primary key (that will just be a number starting at 1 and increasing n
> +1)...
>
> 2) I have a column named DATEID in a table DATA that contains the
> following format connected to each other(date and name):
>
> 20071030Jones
> 20071020Smith
> 20070918Rogers
> 20080122Williams
> etc..
>
> What would the syntax be to insert a column to the right of this one,
> and extract the first 8 digits from the data in the DATEID column and
> insert that into the new column DATE, therefore making it easier for
> me to query against an actual date?
>
> Thanks

You need something to parse your input, such as Python, PHP, C/C++,
Java, Perl, etc.

That isn't something MySQL does, or any other database for that matter.