Re: Unique numeric column in Oracle V7.3

From: Fenella Tan <fenella_at_voicenet.com>
Date: 1997/09/24
Message-ID: <3429BD55.1E3E94BF@voicenet.com>#1/1

Ian Douglas wrote:

> I am an Oracle newbie. Could someone please tell me how to create a
> column with in an Oracle Table that has an automatically unique
> sequential number. I have looked at the rowid column, but this is no
> good to me because I need to specify the column name.
>
> Any help in what must surely be a very simple operation would be
> appreciated.
> --
> Ian Douglas

Define the column as a number (length is up to you).

CREATE TABLE xx
( row_nbr NUMBER(10)
);

Then create a sequence number that has the same length as your column (Can't remember the syntax for this. Just look it up in the Oracle documentation). Let's call the sequence SEQ_ROW_NBR.

When you insert into the table, just issue this : INSERT INTO xx (row_nbr)
VALUES (SEQ_ROW_NBR.NEXTVAL); Use 'SELECT SEQ_ROW_NBR.CURRVAL FROM DUAL' if you want to know what the highest current sequence number is.

Hope this helps.

Fenella Received on Wed Sep 24 1997 - 00:00:00 CDT