I have a sequence having a huge difference of value around 2000 while using Merge..I initially had a cache of 20 while defining my sequence definition..later I redefined my sequence to
CREATE SEQUENCE "DMODS"."ORDER_SEQ"
MINVALUE 1
MAXVALUE 9999999999
INCREMENT 1
START WITH 1
NOCACHE
ORDER
NOCYCLE
I noticed that the value of the sequence is now varying by 2000 on an average for inserts/updates happening on the same day..can you please throw some light on this?
to quote Tom Kyte (https://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p=100:11:0::::P11_QUESTION_ID:530735152441)
Sequences will never generate a gap free sequence of numbers.
If someone calls seq.nextval and doesn't insert the value somewhere (or does insert it
and later rolls back their transaction) that number is GONE.
Sequences are database objects and may be aged out of the shared pool like everything
else -- it doesn't take a database shutdown to produce a gap.
You should never count on a sequence generating anything even close to a gap free
sequence of numbers. They are a high speed, extremely scalable multi-user way to
generate surrogate keys for a table.
basically, it's not a problem, they do what they do. If you need a continuous sequence of numbers for your primary key you need to generate it yourself (max+1)
Dave
Related
This is more of a request for a quick explanation of the sequences used to generate ID from the Spring Batch tables that store Job and Step information.
I've ran the below sequences in DB2 for Spring Boot + Batch application:
CREATE SEQUENCE AR_REPORT_ETL_STEP_EXECUTION_SEQ AS BIGINT MAXVALUE 9223372036854775807 NO CYCLE;
CREATE SEQUENCE AR_REPORT_ETL_JOB_EXECUTION_SEQ AS BIGINT MAXVALUE 9223372036854775807 NO CYCLE;
CREATE SEQUENCE AR_REPORT_ETL_JOB_SEQ AS BIGINT MAXVALUE 9223372036854775807 NO CYCLE;
When the Spring Batch job is running, each ID field is being incremented by 20 on each new record. Though this isn't a major issue, it's still slightly confusing as to why.
I had removed the sequences and added them again with INCREMENT BY 1. This is now incremented every second record by 1 and the other record by 20.
Any tips or explanation would be a great learning opportunity.
For performance reasons, Db2 for Linux Unix Windows by default will preallocate 20 numbers of a sequence and keep them in memory for faster access.
If you don't want that caching behaviour and can tolerate the overhead of allocating without caching, then you can use the NO CACHE option when defining the sequence. But be aware that without caching, Db2 must do synchronous transaction-log-write for each number to be allocated from the sequence, which is usually undesirable in high frequency insert situations.
Remember to explicitly activate the database (i.e do not depend on auto-activation), as unused pre-allocated cached sequence numbers get discarded when the database deactivates.
Example no cache syntax:
CREATE SEQUENCE AR_REPORT_ETL_STEP_EXECUTION_SEQ
AS BIGINT MAXVALUE 9223372036854775807 NO CACHE NO CYCLE;
You can read more details in the documentation.
First I run all these in java with jdbc driver...
Here I define a table:
create table HistoryCCP(
ID NUMBER(6) NOT NULL,
SCRIPT VARCHAR2(1000) NOT NULL
)
Here I define a sequence:
CREATE SEQUENCE SYSTEM.HistoryId
MINVALUE 1
MAXVALUE 1000000
INCREMENT BY 1
START WITH 1
NOORDER
NOCYCLE
Now I insert to table by using this here:
insert into HistoryCCP
values (SYSTEM.HistoryId.nextval ,'HELLOOOO ')
Whenever I close the program and run it again and try to insert, it increments it by ten!
And when I defined sequence like this:
CREATE SEQUENCE SYSTEM.HistoryId
MINVALUE 1
MAXVALUE 1000000
INCREMENT BY 1
START WITH 1
CACHE 100 -- added cache parameter
NOORDER
NOCYCLE
It increase it by 100!
Do you know why it behaves like this and how to increment it by 1?
Never rely on sequences for gap free numbering.
The cache value is the number of sequence values that are held in memory by the database server to avoid the need to keep updating it's internal $SEQ table with the most recently used value. If you reduce the cache value then you increase the rate at which the $SEQ table has to be modified, which slows the system.
Cached values can be aged out, and are lost on system restart, and values are not reused if a transaction gets rolled back.
The presence of gaps should not be a problem for you -- if it is then you'll need to use something other than a sequence to generate the numbers, and doing so will serialise inserts to that table.
Try to use NOCACHE options for sequence.
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B28359_01/server.111/b28310/views002.htm
NOCACHE would work, but also would be a bad idea under for many reasons, and a total nonsense if you plan to bring your application on a Oracle RAC.
Oracle Sequences are for (internal) unique ID, not for strictly progressive number imposed by requirements. As example, let's say that using a sequence for generating the classical "protocol number" is a common flaw of many financial accounting software: looks easy when beginning but when the project grows it kills you.
Each time I restart my DB2 services, the auto increment field, always change by itself,
for example : before I restart, the auto increment value is at 13, and it's incremented by 1, and after I restart it's always become 31 and it's always incremented by 20
Any idea what may cause this?
Each time I restarted my Db2 service, I have to execute this command
ALTER TABLE <table> ALTER COLUMN <column> RESTART WITH 1
DB2 has a cache of generated values in order to reduce the overhead of generating values (Reduce the IO). This cache in memory, and assign the values as requested.
Take a look at the cache option when creating / altering the table. By default the cache value is 20.
It is important to understand how the sequeneces work in DB2. Sequences share many concepts with generated values / identity column.
Create table http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/db2luw/v10r1/topic/com.ibm.db2.luw.sql.ref.doc/doc/r0000927.html
Alter table http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/db2luw/v10r1/topic/com.ibm.db2.luw.sql.ref.doc/doc/r0000888.html
Sequences http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/db2luw/v10r1/topic/com.ibm.db2.luw.admin.dbobj.doc/doc/c0023175.html
From W3schools:
"Auto-increment allows a unique number to be generated when a new record is inserted into a table."
This is the only thing you may expect: unique (=non-conflicting) numbers. How these are generated is left to the DBMS. You must not expect a number sequence without any gaps.
For instance, a DBMS might choose to "pre-allocate" blocks of ten numbers (23..32, 33..42, ...) for performance reasons, so that the auto-increment field must only be incremented for every (up to) ten records. If you have an INSERT statement that inserts only 5 records into a newly created table, it can "acquire a block of 10 numbers" (0..9), use the first five values (0..4) of it and leave the rest unused. By acquiring this one block of numbers, the counter was incremented from 0 to 10. So the next INSERT statement that fetches a block will get the numbers ranging from 10 to 19.
I am trying to use Dennis' solution here as an implementation of auto_increment in Oracle database. Say I create one sequence as follows:
CREATE SEQUENCE auto_increment
START WITH 1
INCREMENT BY 1;
If I want auto_increment behavior in multiple tables, can I just use this sequence for all tables? Or do I need a separate sequence per table? That is, will the sequence increment for one table be affected by another table using the sequence?
Yes, the sequence accesses will be affecting each other if you use the same sequence. However the tone of your question makes me think that you expect the sequence to be continuous.
Don't be fooled, sequences are NOT sequential. The only thing that you can be garanteed is that the numbers retrieved are unique, and in an ascending order (in your case)
You can use the same sequence for many tables. It would be unconventional to do so, it would lead to more contention on the sequence, and it would make life a bit more difficult if you needed to reset the sequence value as a result of, say, an export and import between environments but it would work.
Of course, if the sequence gave a value of 1 for table A, it would never give that same value to a trigger defined on B. Since sequences do not generate gap-free sets of values (i.e. you can guarantee that there will be "missing" values in every table no matter how many sequences you create) that shouldn't be a major downside.
Sequences are sequential. However, there are many things that can cause gaps in the sequence e.g rollback, commit (because the sequence generator issues sequences irrespective of commits or rollbacks), and same sequence for multiple tables.
I have created a table in APEX that has a PK that is incremented by a SQL sequence:
CREATE SEQUENCE seq_increment
MINVALUE 1
START WITH 880
INCREMENT BY 1
CACHE 10
This seems to work perfectly. The issue is that sometimes, usually when I get on in the morning and run a process to enter a new row, it skips a bunch of numbers. I only care because these numbers are being used as the ID# of documents in my company and losing/skipping blocks of numbers is not going to be acceptable when this tool goes live.
It does seem to jump to the next '10' number. i.e. yesterday my last test assigned 883 and this morning it assigned 890 as the next number. Looking at my code for creation of the sequence I notice that I have set it up to cache 10 values so that it will process quicker. Is it possible that this cache is getting dumped over night and that it is pulling 890 because it had 880-889 in cache and it was dumped?
Are there other potential causes and solutions?
Sequences will not and can not generate gap-free values. So you'd expect that numbers will occasionally be skipped. That's perfectly normal when you're using sequences.
As you've surmised, the most likely scenario is that the sequence cache is aging out of the shared pool overnight when the APEX application isn't being used. You can reduce the frequency of gaps by declaring your sequence NOCACHE but that will decrease performance and it will not eliminate gaps it will just make them less frequent.
Oracle sequences are never guaranteed to be contiguous. If you need an absolutely contiguous set of values, you'll need to implement a custom solution.
Odds are that CACHE 10 is why you're losing numbers in this case. The cache value is how many sequence values are stored in memory for future use. Rebooting will clear the cache and cause 10 new values to be retrieved. Similarly, if the sequence is not used for long enough, the current set of values may be flushed out of the shared pool, also causing a new set of values to be retrieved.
This is clearly not the case in your instance, but sequence numbers can also be lost due to rollbacks. A rolled back transaction involving one or more sequences discards the sequence value(s).
Some sequence numbers have been aged out of one of the in-memory structures (shared pool I think?). This is expected behaviour for sequences. The only guarantee that you have is that they are unique. If you need to present gap-free sequences you'll have to do this at reporting time using e.g. rownum pseudo-column. It is made this way deliberately otherwise you would have to serialise all inserts i.e. lock table. And even that wouldn't work properly if an insert was rolled back!