Generating Primary Key Column Sql

Unique Key
Insert Into Primary Key Column Sql

Much to the frustration of database administrators worldwide, prior to Oracle version 12c in mid-2014, Oracle simply had no inherent ability to inherently generate auto incrementing columns within a table schema. While the reasons for this design decision can only be guessed at, the good news is that even for users on older Oracle systems, there is a possible workaround to circumnavigate this pitfall and create your own auto incremented primary key column.

Feb 22, 2010 You can use Alter table Alter column to make changes to your columns' data type, but there are some restrictions. In your case, you are running into issue with the Primary key constrain on your primary key column. 'The modified column can’t have a PRIMARY KEY or FOREIGN KEY constraint defined on it.' (From SQL Server 2008 Internals, Chaper 5). May 29, 2012 Jamie King of Neumont University demonstrating how auto-generated primary key values behave with INSERT. SQL Primary Keys - Auto-Generating With Identity Columns.

Creating a Sequence

The first step is to create a SEQUENCE in your database, which is a data object that multiple users can access to automatically generate incremented values. As discussed in the documentation, a sequence in Oracle prevents duplicate values from being created simultaneously because multiple users are effectively forced to “take turns” before each sequential item is generated.

For the purposes of creating a unique primary key for a new table, first we must CREATE the table we’ll be using:

Next we need to add a PRIMARY KEY constraint:

Finally, we’ll create our SEQUENCE that will be utilized later to actually generate the unique, auto incremented value.

Adding a Trigger

While we have our table created and ready to go, our sequence is thus far just sitting there but never being put to use. This is where TRIGGERS come in.

Similar to an event in modern programming languages, a TRIGGER in Oracle is a stored procedure that is executed when a particular event occurs.

Typically a TRIGGER will be configured to fire when a table is updated or a record is deleted, providing a bit of cleanup when necessary.

In our case, we want to execute our TRIGGER prior to INSERT into our books table, ensuring our SEQUENCE is incremented and that new value is passed onto our primary key column.

Here we are creating (or replacing if it exists) the TRIGGER named books_on_insert and specifying that we want the trigger to fire BEFORE INSERT occurs for the books table, and to be applicable to any and all rows therein.

The ‘code’ of the trigger itself is fairly simple: We SELECT the next incremental value from our previously created books_sequenceSEQUENCE, and inserting that into the :new record of the books table in the specified .id field.

Note: The FROM dual part is necessary to complete a proper query but is effectively irrelevant. The dual table is just a single dummy row of data and is added, in this case, just so it can be ignored and we can instead execute the system function of our trigger rather than returning data of some kind.

IDENTITY Columns

IDENTITY columns were introduced in Oracle 12c, allowing for simple auto increment functionality in modern versions of Oracle.

Using the IDENTITY column is functionally similar to that of other database systems. Recreating our above books table schema in modern Oracle 12c or higher, we’d simply use the following column definition.

Primary Key Generation Using Oracle's Sequence

Oracle provides the sequence utility to automatically generate unique primary keys. To use this utility to auto-generate primary keys for a CMP entity bean, you must create a sequence table and use the @AutomaticKeyGeneration annotation to point to this table. /spyware-doctor-license-key-generator.html.

In your Oracle database, you must create a sequence table that will create the primary keys, as shown in the following example:

This creates a sequences of primary key values, starting with 1, followed by 2, 3, and so forth. The sequence table in the example uses the default increment 1, but you can change this by specifying the increment keyword, such as increment by 3. When you do the latter, you must specify the exact same value in the cacheSize attribute of the @AutomaticKeyGeneration annotation:

If you have specified automatic table creation in the CMP bean's project settings, the sequence table will be created automatically when the entity bean is deployed. For more information, see @JarSettings Annotation. For more information on the definition of a CMP entity bean, see below.

Primary Key Generation Using SQL Server's IDENTITY

In SQL Server you can use the IDENTITY keyword to indicate that a primary-key needs to be auto-generated. The following example shows a common scenario where the first primary key value is 1, and the increment is 1:

In the CMP entity bean definition you need to specify SQLServer(2000) as the type of automatic key generator you are using. You can also provide a cache size:

Primary Key Generation Using a Named Sequence Table

A named sequence table is similar to the Oracle sequence functionality in that a dedicated table is used to generate primary keys. However, the named sequence table approach is vendor-neutral. To auto-generate primary keys this way, create a named sequence table using the two SQL statements shown in the example:

In the CMP entity bean definition you need to specify the named sequence table as the type of automatic key generator you are using. You can also provide a cache size:

Note. When you specify a cacheSize value for a named sequence table, a series of unique values are reserved for entity bean creation. When a new cache is necessary, a second series of unique values is reserved, under the assumption that the first series of unique values was entirely used. This guarantees that primary key values are always unique, although it leaves open the possibility that primary key values are not necessarily sequential. For instance, when the first series of values is 10..20, the second series of values is 21-30, even if not all values in the first series were actually used to create entity beans.

Unique Key

Defining the CMP Entity Bean

When defining a CMP entity bean that uses one of the primary key generators, you use the the @AutomaticKeyGeneration annotation to point to the name of the primary key generator table to obtain primary keys. Also, you must define a primary key field of type Integer or Long to set and get the auto-generated primary key. However, the ejbCreate method does not take a primary key value as an argument. Instead the EJB container adds the correct primary key to the entity bean record.

The following example shows what the entity bean might look like. Notice that the bean uses the named sequence option described above, and that ejbCreate method does not take a primary key: