ORA-00001 is Oracle's error for 'unique constraint violated' - it fires when an INSERT or UPDATE tries to create a duplicate value in a column with a UNIQUE constraint or PRIMARY KEY. The parenthesized text clarifies that the offending data was rejected. Other options are different errors: ORA-06500 is PL/SQL error, ORA-01403 is no data found, ORA-00990 is insufficient privileges.