Expanding a bit on the answers from @Guru and @Ronnis, you can hide the sequence and make it look more like an auto-increment using a trigger, and have a procedure that does the insert for you and returns the generated ID as an out parameter.
create table batch(batchid number,
batchname varchar2(30),
batchtype char(1),
source char(1),
intarea number)
/
create sequence batch_seq start with 1
/
create trigger batch_bi
before insert on batch
for each row
begin
select batch_seq.nextval into :new.batchid from dual;
end;
/
create procedure insert_batch(v_batchname batch.batchname%TYPE,
v_batchtype batch.batchtype%TYPE,
v_source batch.source%TYPE,
v_intarea batch.intarea%TYPE,
v_batchid out batch.batchid%TYPE)
as
begin
insert into batch(batchname, batchtype, source, intarea)
values(v_batchname, v_batchtype, v_source, v_intarea)
returning batchid into v_batchid;
end;
/
You can then call the procedure instead of doing a plain insert, e.g. from an anoymous block:
declare
l_batchid batch.batchid%TYPE;
begin
insert_batch(v_batchname => 'Batch 1',
v_batchtype => 'A',
v_source => 'Z',
v_intarea => 1,
v_batchid => l_batchid);
dbms_output.put_line('Generated id: ' || l_batchid);
insert_batch(v_batchname => 'Batch 99',
v_batchtype => 'B',
v_source => 'Y',
v_intarea => 9,
v_batchid => l_batchid);
dbms_output.put_line('Generated id: ' || l_batchid);
end;
/
Generated id: 1
Generated id: 2
You can make the call without an explicit anonymous block, e.g. from SQL*Plus:
variable l_batchid number;
exec insert_batch('Batch 21', 'C', 'X', 7, :l_batchid);
... and use the bind variable :l_batchid to refer to the generated value afterwards:
print l_batchid;
insert into some_table values(:l_batch_id, ...);