Best way to do an Insert or Update

Question

I am doing some insert/updates via php to oracle.
Each one will have to return an id to php.
If its an insert it will return the new id (generated by a trigger and sequence)
if its an update it will return the id.
Is the best way to do this with a seperate insert statement and update stament ?
Or a Merge for both ? I like merge but then how do you return the ID in the same statement...

Answer 1

Pleiadian wrote:
If the id is generated by a trigger, you will not have control over the sequence and would have to query the id after insert/update.
In this specific scenario where you want to return the id, it may be better not to use a trigger, but to explicitly call the sequence.nextval and store it in a variable so you can return it at the end of the function.
Why?  You can still use a trigger and return the value into a variable...
SQL> create table mytable (id number, myval varchar2(20))
  2  /
Table created.
SQL> create sequence mysequence
  2  /
Sequence created.
SQL> create or replace trigger trg_mytable
  2  before insert on mytable
  3  for each row
  4  begin
  5    select mysequence.nextval into :new.id from dual;
  6  end;
  7  /
Trigger created.
SQL> set serverout on
SQL> create or replace procedure insert_rec(val varchar2) is
  2    v_id number;
  3  begin
  4    insert into mytable (myval) values (val)
  5      returning id into v_id;
  6    dbms_output.put_line('Record inserted with id: '||v_id);
  7  end;
  8  /
Procedure created.
SQL> exec insert_rec('Test');
Record inserted with id: 1
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL> exec insert_rec('Test2');
Record inserted with id: 2
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.