Is it possible to find out a PACKAGEs publically available variables algorithmically?

If I declare a variable in the PACKAGE specification it is available for use by other PACKAGEs.

But can one PACKAGE determine the existance of a public variable in another package at run-time?

I could use dynamic SQL to try to read a variable from a package, and trap any exceptions to realise it doesn't exist in the other package.

But this is not my problem. This approach tells me if variable X exists in package Y. It will not tell me what variables exist in package Y.

In theory parsing user_source would reveal this information but that's pie-in- the-sky.

Is there an Oracle view I should know about or is this a PL/SQL limitation, albeit not very important?

-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own Received on Fri Oct 30 1998 - 11:01:51 CST