Re: Sequence CURRVAL & NEXTVAL

On Wed, 11 Aug 2004 18:01:39 -0400, CV <cv_at_nospamadelphia.net> wrote:

> We have a procedure that tries to insert records into a table and uses
> the
> ID generated by a sequence as the primary key. Some inserts result in
> exceptions due to a Unique_key constraint. This is a desired behaviour
> for
> some exception handling that we do.
> However, using the inserts as described above results in "wasting" many
> of
> the IDs from the sequence because the numbers generating an exception are
> not inserted. The inserts use sequence.NEXTVAL before doing an insert.
> To maintain continuity in the ID values, I have tried using temporary
> variables to hold the value of sequence.CURRVAL & increment the sequence
> value only if the insert succeeds. However, this approach doesn't work
> for
> the very first insertion & I get the following error:
> ORA-08002: sequence TEST_SEQ.CURRVAL is not yet defined in this session
>
> Is there a way of using CURRVAL & NEXTVAL in an if-loop, so that their
> values are incremented only if a certain condition is met?

Oracle has never guaranteed gapless sequences. And therefore it's a design flaw to use them if gaps are a problem.

What's the problem, precisely, with "wasting" numbers anyway? It's not as if they are a scarce resource, after all.

Regards
HJR Received on Thu Aug 12 2004 - 00:37:21 CEST