Tag Archives: Sequence

ORACLE 18c – ALTER SEQUENCE RESTART

20 Tuesday Feb 2018

Posted by in ORACLE 18c

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, ,

How many times have we seen the request to “set back” or “set forward” a sequence to its original value. Reasons for doing this have been e.g. having a sequence, that start every time period (e.g. month) new or a heavy import has been done and the sequence should now be set to the max-value+1 of the rows inserted to the table.

There have been various ways to solve this kind of issues.

  • To set the sequence back normally we dropped and recreated it (and hopefully did not forget the grants).
  • To set the sequence to a new high value, we just built a loop or changed the stepwidth to get the sequence to the desired value.

All those workarounds are no longer needed with ORACLE 18c as there is a new option that we can use to handle both cases.

Test 1:

After having consumed 500 number from the sequence, we would like to set it back to it’s original value (1).

CREATE SEQUENCE MonthlySeq 
   START WITH 1
   INCREMENT BY 1 
   MINVALUE 1 
   MAXVALUE 9999;

DECLARE 
   l_val NUMBER; 
BEGIN 
   FOR i IN 1..500 
   LOOP 
      l_val := MonthlySeq.NEXTVAL; 
   END LOOP; 
END;
/

SELECT MonthlySeq.nextval 
 FROM dual;

NEXTVAL
-------
    501
 
ALTER SEQUENCE MonthlySeq RESTART;

SELECT MonthlySeq.nextval 
 FROM dual;

NEXTVAL
-------
      1

So this works as expected.

Test 2:

After having consumed 500 number from the sequence, we would like to set it forward to 1500.

CREATE SEQUENCE MonthlySeq 
   START WITH 1
   INCREMENT BY 1 
   MINVALUE 1 
   MAXVALUE 9999;

DECLARE 
   l_val NUMBER; 
BEGIN 
   FOR i IN 1..500 
   LOOP 
      l_val := MonthlySeq.NEXTVAL; 
   END LOOP; 
END;
/

SELECT MonthlySeq.nextval 
 FROM dual;

NEXTVAL
-------
    501
 
ALTER SEQUENCE MonthlySeq RESTART START WITH 1500;

SELECT MonthlySeq.nextval 
 FROM dual;

NEXTVAL
-------
   1500

Excellent….

Test 3:

I expect the ALTER SEQUENCE statement to commit open transactions…but just to be sure.

CREATE SEQUENCE MonthlySeq 
   START WITH 1
   INCREMENT BY 1 
   MINVALUE 1 
   MAXVALUE 9999;

CREATE TABLE t (x NUMBER);

DECLARE 
   l_val NUMBER; 
BEGIN 
   FOR i IN 1..500 
   LOOP 
      l_val := MonthlySeq.NEXTVAL; 
   END LOOP; 
END;
/

SELECT MonthlySeq.nextval 
 FROM dual;

NEXTVAL
-------
    501

INSERT INTO t VALUES (1);
 
ALTER SEQUENCE MonthlySeq RESTART START WITH 1500;

ROLLBACK;

SELECT *
 FROM t;

X
-
1

ok, would have been nice if not, but it’s what was expected.

Conclusion

Still this is a nice feature available in ORACLE 18c but not in the documentation (SQL 

There you will find:

To restart the sequence at a different number, you must drop and re-create it.

and

You will also miss the RESTART option in the syntax diagram of the ALTER SEQUENCE command…

Update (6.1.2020)

After having filed an SR with ORACLE pointing out that the RESTART option is missing in the documentation, I got the following answer:

It (ALTER SEQUENCE … RESTART) was created for internal operations –
Requested to use (ALTER SEQUENCE) as per documentation.

Which means for me, that the restart option is not supported but as oracle is using it internally …

ORACLE 12c Release 1 – Session Level Sequences

18 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by in ORACLE 11g Release 2

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

A sequence that starts at the starting point with every session that accesses the sequence…what is this good for?

Now, I could think at things like logging, where we could give every step of a session a ascending step_id, which would be stored in the log table along with the session_id to which the step belonged. Or we could have a transaction which creates a series of entries in the database and within the transaction those entries are numbered for whatever purpose. Generating Primary Keys for a Global Temporary Table would be another field where those kinds of sequences could be used.

Create a session level sequence

A session level sequence is generated using the new SESSION key word. This will restart the sequence for every session.

CREATE SEQUENCE session_seq
   START WITH   1
   INCREMENT BY 1
   SESSION
/

Usage

Example filling a global temporary table using a session level sequence as primary key generator:

CREATE SEQUENCE session_seq
 START WITH   1
 INCREMENT BY 1
 SESSION
/

Sequence created.

CREATE GLOBAL TEMPORARY TABLE employees_temp_table (
    employee_id  NUMBER DEFAULT session_seq.nextval NOT NULL
   ,first_name VARCHAR2(20)
   ,last_name VARCHAR2(25)
   )
   ON COMMIT PRESERVE ROWS
/

Table created.

REM ===========================================================================
REM Add rows to table
REM ===========================================================================
INSERT INTO employees_temp_table (first_name, last_name)
SELECT first_name, last_name
  FROM hr.employees
 WHERE rownum < 20
/

19 rows created.

REM ===========================================================================
REM Show the results
REM ===========================================================================
SELECT *
  FROM employees_temp_table
/

EMPLOYEE_ID FIRST_NAME           LAST_NAME
----------- -------------------- -------------------------
          1 Ellen                Abel
          2 Sundar               Ande
          3 Mozhe                Atkinson
          4 David                Austin
          5 Hermann              Baer
          6 Shelli               Baida
          7 Amit                 Banda
          8 Elizabeth            Bates
          9 Sarah                Bell
         10 David                Bernstein
         11 Laura                Bissot
         12 Harrison             Bloom
         13 Alexis               Bull
         14 Anthony              Cabrio
         15 Gerald               Cambrault
         16 Nanette              Cambrault
         17 John                 Chen
         18 Kelly                Chung
         19 Karen                Colmenares

19 rows selected.

If another session does the same thing, the employee_id will start at 1 again.