Insert if not exists Oracle

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Coming late to the party, but…

With oracle 11.2.0.1 there is a semantic hint that can do this: IGNORE_ROW_ON_DUPKEY_INDEX

Example:

insert /*+ IGNORE_ROW_ON_DUPKEY_INDEX(customer_orders,pk_customer_orders) */
  into customer_orders
       (order_id, customer, product)
values (    1234,     9876,  'K598')
     ;

UPDATE: Although this hint works (if you spell it correctly), there are better approaches which don’t require Oracle 11R2:

First approach—direct translation of above semantic hint:

begin
  insert into customer_orders
         (order_id, customer, product)
  values (    1234,     9876,  'K698')
  ;
  commit;
exception
  when DUP_VAL_ON_INDEX
  then ROLLBACK;
end;

Second aproach—a lot faster than both above hints when there’s a lot of contention:

begin
    select count (*)
    into   l_is_matching_row
    from   customer_orders
    where  order_id = 1234
    ;

    if (l_is_matching_row = 0)
    then
      insert into customer_orders
             (order_id, customer, product)
      values (    1234,     9876,  'K698')
      ;
      commit;
    end if;
exception
  when DUP_VAL_ON_INDEX
  then ROLLBACK;
end;

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