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Asked: 2026-05-10T16:09:31+00:00

With SQLServer, it seems to be generally accepted that adding a SELECT SCOPE_IDENTITY() to

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With SQLServer, it seems to be generally accepted that adding a SELECT SCOPE_IDENTITY() to the end of your insert is the best way to return the PK of the newly-inserted record, assuming you’re using an auto-increment field for the pk.

However, I can’t seem to find the equivalent for Oracle.

Best practice seems to be to use a sequence to generate the PK, but there are different options for how to implement even that. Do you leave it up to the developer to insert sequence.nexval, or use a trigger?

In either case, getting the new ID back seems to be a common problem.

Suggestions and solutions I’ve run across include:

  • creating a stored proc that returns the PK
  • running a select id from seq.nextval, then passing that to the insert
  • select max(id) after insert (Note: Don’t do this!)
  • add a RETURNING clause to the insert

What should the ‘best practice’ solution be for this situation?

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  1. You can use the RETURNING clause to do this in Oracle stored procs.

    For example:

    TABLEA has NAME and EMP_ID. EMP_ID is populated internally when records are inserted.

    INSERT INTO TABLEA(NAME) VALUES (‘BOB’) RETURNING EMP_ID INTO o_EMP_ID;

    That’s assuming that line is in a stored proc with an output parameter of o_EMP_ID.

    Hope that helps… if not, here’s a more detailed example:

    http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/appdev.102/b14261/returninginto_clause.htm

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