All about Oracle sequences

This talk is a primer for anyone interested in understanding and using Oracle sequences. We will cover basics for someone who has never used sequences, as well as advanced topics targeted towards developers and DBAs. Finally, we will explore some new and exciting sequence enhancements.

Sequences are one of Oracle’s simplest and oldest database objects and are extensively used throughout the database, right from startup. Despite their widespread use and available documentation, users and DBAs still have trouble at times with tweaking sequence behavior to best serve their purpose. This is especially true with less used sequence types and settings such as ordered sequences, RAC and ADG.

In this talk, we will explore all aspects of sequences. We will begin with going over available sequence types and the basics of how to create, manage and tune them. We will discuss areas of contention with sequence usage and ways to detect and resolve them. We will also look at sequence behavior in RAC and ADG settings with particular emphasis on ordered sequences on RAC — a frequent source of customer contention issues.

Finally, we will look at some recent sequence enhancements, their underlying motivations, and how you can use them to makes your applications run faster.