Procedure to insert a new row with data, but no PK

Question

Ok,
I have an assignment to insert a row into an existing table and to insert values (via a procedure) into certain fields. However, none of the fields that are to be INSERTED upon are the PK field.
I wrote the following for a start, and I get an error since I have NULL in the PK field. The PK is named PRODUCTID. I am only to insert p_name, p_description, p_imgname, p_cost, and p_status. I am in school now, and am a beginner at PL/SQL, and any help would be appreciated.
How can I do this without assigning a value to the PK field?
For reference: there are 10 rows in the table, and the one I'm inserting is row 11.
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE prod_add_sp
   (p_name IN bb_product.productname%type,
    p_description IN bb_product.description%type,
    p_imgname IN bb_product.productimage%type,
    p_cost IN bb_product.price%type,
    p_status IN bb_product.active%type)
   IS
  BEGIN
    INSERT INTO bb_product (idproduct, productname, description, productimage, price, active)
     VALUES (lv_prodid_num, p_name, p_description, p_imgname, p_cost, p_status);
END;
/

Answer 1

> Ok, since the table had 10 rows (PK was numbers 1-10, I added number 11 in the PK field for the
corresponding row.
Any other way to do this?
You want to use a number generator to give you a unique number to use as PRODUCT_ID. Such a generator is known as a sequence in Oracle. Like your products table, it needs to be created up front.
E.g.
create sequence product_id_sequence start with 1 increment by 1 nocycle nomaxvalue;
Note that several "copies" of this sequence can be active at the same time to serve a number of concurrent requests. In other words, instead of everyone to queue to get a number from the sequence generator, it creates for example 10 queues and is able to service 10 requests at the same time. This is great for scalability and not creating a bottleneck. At the same time, the numbers handed out are unique but not in a gap free ascending sequence either. Which is fine. Relational design says that we need a UNIQUE number for a surrogate key. Not a gap free ascending number range.
Okay, in your INSERT statement you need to add the PK column and add the next sequence value into it, e.g.
INSERT INTO products ( product_id, .... ) VALUES( product_id_sequence.nextval, ... );
Refer to the documentation URLs posted above on sequences for more details.