Creating a trigger in Oracle Express

Question

I was trying to do something like auto-increment in Oracle 11g Express and SQL Developer. I know very little about Oracle and I am also new to triggers.

I tried running this, but I don't know how to do it properly.

CREATE TABLE theschema.thetable
(id NUMBER PRIMARY KEY,
name VARCHAR2(30));

CREATE SEQUENCE theschema.test1_sequence
START WITH 1
INCREMENT BY 1;

create or replace trigger insert_nums
before insert on theschema.thetable
for each row
begin
select test1_sequence.nextval into :new.id from dual;
end;
/

When I try to create the trigger, I get a screen which asks me for some "binds". The dialog box has only one check box "null". What does this mean and how do I make a script that works properly?

Any precautions to take while doing this kind of "auto-increment" ?

Answer 1

It seems that SQL Developer thinks that you are running a plain DML (data manipulation) script, not a DDL (data definition). It also thinks that :new.id is a bindable variable.

Why this happens, I don't know; I can't reproduce it in Oracle SQL Developer 2.1.

Try to open a new SQL worksheet window in the theschema schema and execute a "whole" script (not a statement) by pressing F5 (not F9).