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 is complete solution w.r.t exception/error handling for auto increment, this solution is backward compatible and will work on 11g & 12c, specifically if application is in production.

Please replace 'TABLE_NAME' with your appropriate table name

--checking if table already exisits
BEGIN
    EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'DROP TABLE TABLE_NAME';
    EXCEPTION WHEN OTHERS THEN NULL;
END;
/

--creating table
CREATE TABLE TABLE_NAME (
       ID NUMBER(10) PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
       .
       .
       .
);

--checking if sequence already exists
BEGIN
    EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'DROP SEQUENCE TABLE_NAME_SEQ';
    EXCEPTION WHEN OTHERS THEN NULL;
END;

--creating sequence
/
CREATE SEQUENCE TABLE_NAME_SEQ START WITH 1 INCREMENT BY 1 MINVALUE 1 NOMAXVALUE NOCYCLE CACHE 2;

--granting rights as per required user group
/
GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE ON TABLE_NAME TO USER_GROUP;

-- creating trigger
/
CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER TABLE_NAME_TS BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE ON TABLE_NAME FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN    
    -- auto increment column
    SELECT TABLE_NAME_SEQ.NextVal INTO :New.ID FROM dual;

    -- You can also put some other required default data as per need of your columns, for example
    SELECT SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV', 'SESSIONID') INTO :New.SessionID FROM dual;
    SELECT SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','SERVER_HOST') INTO :New.HostName FROM dual;
    SELECT SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','OS_USER') INTO :New.LoginID FROM dual;    
    .
    .
    .
END;
/