How could sequence.nextval be null in Oracle?

I have an Oracle sequence defined like so:

CREATE SEQUENCE  "DALLAS"."X_SEQ"  
    MINVALUE 0 
    MAXVALUE 999999999999999999999999999 
    INCREMENT BY 1 START WITH 0 NOCACHE  NOORDER  NOCYCLE ;

It is used in a stored procedure to insert a record:

PROCEDURE Insert_Record
                (p_name    IN  VARCHAR2,                
                 p_userid  IN  INTEGER,
                 cur_out   OUT TYPES_PKG.RefCursor)
    IS
        v_id NUMBER := 0;
    BEGIN
        -- Get id value from sequence
        SELECT x_seq.nextval
          INTO v_id
          FROM dual;

        -- Line below is X_PKG line 40
        INSERT INTO X
            (the_id,            
             name,                        
             update_userid)
          VALUES
            (v_id,
             p_name,                        
             p_userid);

        -- Return new id
        OPEN cur_out FOR
            SELECT v_id the_id
              FROM dual;
    END;

Occasionally, this procedure returns an error when executed from application code.

ORA-01400: cannot insert NULL into ("DALLAS"."X"."THE_ID") 
ORA-06512: at "DALLAS.X_PKG", line 40 
ORA-06512: at line 1

Details that may or may not be relevant:

• Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production

• The procedure is executed via Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary - Data.Oracle.OracleDatabase.ExecuteReader(DbCommand command)

• The application does not wrap the call in an explicit transaction.

• The insert fails intermittently - less than 1%

Under what circumstances could x_seq.nextval be null?

I'm pretty certain this will end up being an artifact of your code, or the .net driver you are using. I've knocked up a quick demo for you using pure SQL - PL/SQL and never get a lost sequence value. Incidentally the ref cursor you are using is probably unnecessary and likely impacts performance and readability of the code - my demo includes an insert_record2 procedure that consistently performs over 10% faster -in about 26s on my laptop vs 36 for the ref cursor version. I at least also think is easier to understand. You could obviously run a modified version against your test database complete with audit trigger.

/* 
demo for dbse 
assumes a user with create table, create sequence, create procedure pivs and quota. 

*/

drop table dbse13142 purge;

create table dbse13142(
    the_id number not null
,   name   varchar2(20)
,   userid number)
;

drop sequence x_seq;
CREATE SEQUENCE  X_SEQ NOCACHE  NOORDER  NOCYCLE ;

create or replace PROCEDURE Insert_Record
                (p_name    IN  VARCHAR2,                
                 p_userid  IN  INTEGER,
                 cur_out   OUT sys_refcursor)
    IS
        v_id NUMBER := 0;
    BEGIN
        -- Get id value from sequence
        SELECT x_seq.nextval
          INTO v_id
          FROM dual;

        -- Line below is X_PKG line 40
        INSERT INTO dbse13142
            (the_id,            
             name,                        
             userid)
          VALUES
            (v_id,
             p_name,                        
             p_userid);

        -- Return new id
        OPEN cur_out FOR
            SELECT v_id the_id
              FROM dual;
    END;
/

create or replace PROCEDURE Insert_Record2
                (p_name    IN  VARCHAR2,                
                 p_userid  IN  INTEGER,
                 p_theid   OUT dbse13142.the_id%type)
    IS
    BEGIN
        -- Get id value from sequence
        SELECT x_seq.nextval
          INTO p_theid
          FROM dual;

        -- Line below is X_PKG line 40
        INSERT INTO dbse13142
            (the_id,            
             name,                        
             userid)
          VALUES
            (p_theid,
             p_name,                        
             p_userid);
    END;
/

set timing on

declare
   c sys_refcursor;
begin   
for i in 1..100000 loop
   insert_record('User '||i,i,c);
   close c;
end loop;
commit;
end;
/

select count(*) from dbse13142;
truncate table dbse13142;

declare
  x number;
begin   
for i in 1..100000 loop
   insert_record2('User '||i,i,x);
end loop;
commit;
end;
/

select count(*) from dbse13142;
truncate table dbse13142;

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#13142, answer score: 4