Inserting into Oracle and retrieving the generated sequence ID

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, ...);