How to create id with AUTO_INCREMENT on Oracle?

Question

It appears that there is no concept of AUTO_INCREMENT in Oracle, up until and including version 11g.

How can I create a column that behaves like auto increment in Or

Answer 1

Here are three flavors:

1. numeric. Simple increasing numeric value, e.g. 1,2,3,....
2. GUID. globally univeral identifier, as a RAW datatype.
3. GUID (string). Same as above, but as a string which might be easier to handle in some languages.

x is the identity column. Substitute FOO with your table name in each of the examples.

-- numerical identity, e.g. 1,2,3...
create table FOO (
    x number primary key
);
create sequence  FOO_seq;

create or replace trigger FOO_trg
before insert on FOO
for each row
begin
  select FOO_seq.nextval into :new.x from dual;
end;
/

-- GUID identity, e.g. 7CFF0C304187716EE040488AA1F9749A
-- use the commented out lines if you prefer RAW over VARCHAR2.
create table FOO (
    x varchar(32) primary key        -- string version
    -- x raw(32) primary key         -- raw version
);

create or replace trigger FOO_trg
before insert on FOO
for each row
begin
  select cast(sys_guid() as varchar2(32)) into :new.x from dual;  -- string version
  -- select sys_guid() into :new.x from dual;                     -- raw version
end;
/

update:

Oracle 12c introduces these two variants that don't depend on triggers:

create table mytable(id number default mysequence.nextval);
create table mytable(id number generated as identity);

The first one uses a sequence in the traditional way; the second manages the value internally.