Question

What’s PLSQL (Oracle) equivalent of this SQL server snippet?

BEGIN TRAN
INSERT INTO mytable(content) VALUES ("test") -- assume there's an ID column that is autoincrement
SELECT @@IDENTITY
COMMIT TRAN

In C#, you can call myCommand.ExecuteScalar() to retrieve the ID of the new row.

How can I insert a new row in Oracle, and have JDBC get a copy of the new id?

EDIT:
BalusC provided a very good starting point. For some reason JDBC doesn’t like named parameter binding. This gives “Incorrectly set or registered parameters” SQLException. Why is this happening?

        OracleConnection conn = getAppConnection();
        String q = "BEGIN INSERT INTO tb (id) values (claim_seq.nextval) returning id into :newId; end;" ;
        CallableStatement cs = (OracleCallableStatement) conn.prepareCall(q);
        cs.registerOutParameter("newId", OracleTypes.NUMBER);
        cs.execute();
        int newId = cs.getInt("newId");

Answer 1

Normally you would use Statement#getGeneratedKeys() for this (see also this answer for an example), but this is as far (still) not supported by the Oracle JDBC driver.

Your best bet is to either make use of CallableStatement with a RETURNING clause:

String sql = "BEGIN INSERT INTO mytable(id, content) VALUES (seq_mytable.NEXTVAL(), ?) RETURNING id INTO ?; END;";

Connection connection = null;
CallableStatement statement = null;

try {
    connection = database.getConnection();
    statement = connection.prepareCall(sql);
    statement.setString(1, "test");
    statement.registerOutParameter(2, Types.NUMERIC);
    statement.execute();
    int id = statement.getInt(2);
    // ...

Or fire SELECT sequencename.CURRVAL after INSERT in the same transaction:

String sql_insert = "INSERT INTO mytable(content) VALUES (?)";
String sql_currval = "SELECT seq_mytable.CURRVAL FROM dual";

Connection connection = null;
PreparedStatement statement = null;
Statement currvalStatement = null;
ResultSet currvalResultSet = null;

try {
    connection = database.getConnection();
    connection.setAutoCommit(false);
    statement = connection.prepareStatement(sql_insert);
    statement.setString(1, "test");
    statement.executeUpdate();
    currvalStatement = connection.createStatement();
    currvalResultSet = currvalStatement.executeQuery(sql_currval);
    if (currvalResultSet.next()) {
        int id = currvalResultSet.getInt(1);
    }
    connection.commit();
    // ...