In Oracle how do I save a sequence.nextval in a variable to be reused in multiple inserts? I'm writing a script to populate some tables with data for testing.

I would like to write something like the following but I don't know how to do it (I'm Oracle 11g)

SET ENABLED_USER_ID = SEQ.NEXTVAL; // PSEUDOCODE
SET DISABLED_USER_ID = SEQ.NEXTVAL; // PSEUDOCODE

INSERT INTO USERS
        (ID,      USR_NAME)
VALUES  (:ENABLED_USER_ID, 'ANDREW');
INSERT INTO CAR
       (CAR_ID,         CAR_NAME, USR_ID)
VALUES (CARSEQ.NEXTVAL, 'FORD',   :ENABLED_USER_ID);

INSERT INTO USERS
        (ID,      USR_NAME)
VALUES  (:DISABLED_USER_ID, 'ANDREW');
INSERT INTO CAR
       (CAR_ID,         CAR_NAME, USR_ID)
VALUES (CARSEQ.NEXTVAL, 'FORD',   :DISABLED_USER_ID);


I know I could rearrange the queries and use the sequence.currval reference, but I'd prefer to have the id saved in properly named variables.

Maybe I should just wrap the script in a DECLARE ... BEGIN ... END; but I'm hoping there is a more concise way to do it.



Addition 27 May 2011 15:31

It seems that in any case I have to declare the variables in a DECLARE block. So I'm trying with 

DECLARE
  USER_ID NUMBER(10,0) := 1;
BEGIN   
  insert into TEST_USER
  values (user_id, 'andrew', sysdate);   
END;


but I get the following error


Caused by: java.sql.SQLException: ORA-06550: **line 2, column 27:**
PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "end-of-file" when expecting one of the following:

  * &amp; = - + ; &lt; / &gt; at in is mod remainder not rem
  &lt;an exponent (**)&gt; &lt;&gt; or != or ~= &gt;= &lt;= &lt;&gt; and or like like2
  like4 likec between || multiset member submultiset



That points to the variable declaration.

I'm using java to load the script from a file and running it using the Oracle JDBC driver (ojdbc14-10.2.0.4.0.jar) on a Oracle 11g server.

The table TEST_USER has been created with

create table TEST_USERS (
    id number(10, 0) not null,
    name varchar2(100),
    date_ins date default sysdate,
    primary key (id)
);
I think it goes like this

DECLARE
    ENABLED_USER_ID PLS_INTEGER;
    DISABLED_USER_ID PLS_INTEGER;
BEGIN
    ENABLED_USER_ID := SEQ.NEXTVAL;
    DISABLED_USER_ID := SEQ.NEXTVAL;

    INSERT INTO USERS (ID, USR_NAME)
    VALUES  (ENABLED_USER_ID, 'ANDREW');

    INSERT INTO CAR (CAR_ID, CAR_NAME, USR_ID)
    VALUES (CARSEQ.NEXTVAL, 'FORD', ENABLED_USER_ID);

    INSERT INTO USERS (ID, USR_NAME)
    VALUES  (DISABLED_USER_ID, 'ANDREW');

    INSERT INTO CAR (CAR_ID, CAR_NAME, USR_ID)
    VALUES (CARSEQ.NEXTVAL, 'FORD', DISABLED_USER_ID);
END;
/