Sorry for being a bit off the Linux topic ... I remember someone was talking to me at the meeting after the meeting and seemed to be an Oracle Guru! Is there anyway to acheive: Database independant way to do autoincrement columns If not Database Independant, how about just for Oracle? Triggers have been suggested; however I would like to stay away from stored procedures. Someone also suggested: INSERT INTO [table] (ID, cols..) VALUES (MAX(ID)+1, ....); Development has been done on a small RDBMS that support they key "IDENTITY" for a column type. This results in an INT/PRIMARYKY that autoincs on insert. Thank you.