I would appreciate some help constructing a trigger. I'm not familiar with
the Oracle syntax, and I haven't been able to find what I need online.

Suppose there is a column in a table that is named COLA2. In this column, I
want to enter the value of column COLA (a number column) + 1.

What is the syntax for such a trigger?

thanks
tg

In Oracle 8i (schema_name1 can be and in most cases should be equal to schema_name2,
ommiting means current schema):

CREATE [OR REPLACE] TRIGGER [schema_name1.]trigger_name
BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE
ON [schema_name2.]table_name
BEGIN
:NEW.COLA2 := :NEW.COLA + 1;
END;

If you are using something like "SQL Plus", then you'll have to add backslash
after the code (in new line).

Hilarion