Insert if not exists Oracle

The statement is called MERGE. Look it up, I'm too lazy.

Beware, though, that MERGE is not atomic, which could cause the following effect (thanks, Marius):

SESS1:

create table t1 (pk int primary key, i int);
create table t11 (pk int primary key, i int);
insert into t1 values(1, 1);
insert into t11 values(2, 21);
insert into t11 values(3, 31);
commit;

SESS2: insert into t1 values(2, 2);

SESS1:

MERGE INTO t1 d
USING t11 s ON (d.pk = s.pk)
WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN INSERT (d.pk, d.i) VALUES (s.pk, s.i);

SESS2: commit;

SESS1: ORA-00001

This only inserts if the item to be inserted is not already present.

Works the same as:

if not exists (...) insert ... 

in T-SQL

insert into destination (DESTINATIONABBREV) 
  select 'xyz' from dual 
  left outer join destination d on d.destinationabbrev = 'xyz' 
  where d.destinationid is null;

may not be pretty, but it's handy :)

We can combine the DUAL and NOT EXISTS to achieve your requirement:

INSERT INTO schema.myFoo ( 
    primary_key, value1, value2
) 
SELECT
    'bar', 'baz', 'bat' 
FROM DUAL
WHERE NOT EXISTS (
    SELECT 1 
    FROM schema.myFoo
    WHERE primary_key = 'bar'
);

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;