Auto Increment after delete in MySQL

Question

I have a MySQL table with a primary key field that has AUTO_INCREMENT on. After reading other posts on here I\'ve noticed people with the same problem and with varied answer

Answer 1

You shouldn't be relying on the AUTO_INCREMENT id to tell you how many records you have in the table. You should be using SELECT COUNT(*) FROM course. ID's are there to uniquely identifiy the course and can be used as references in other tables, so you shouldn't repeat ids and shouldn't be seeking to reset the auto increment field.