Jason,

> What I would prefer to see is someone make a little utility which is
> external to the engine that people, according to their own options and
> requirements, would use to manage such things.

I strongly believe that any efficient implementation of a "returning"
clause should be at the engine level. So should system triggers to
auto-generate keys, while I don't feel an urgent need for the latter and
have dreamt about the former since the first time I used Oracle.
Ciao
--
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_/\/ando