Usefulness of DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE?

Being a C programmer, I am accustomed to the 'printf' statement having 2 different purposes:

• interactive debugging
• returning some value(s) to the calling program.

What about the DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE utility? Is is used only to display stuff from SQL*PLUS, and therefore limited to interactive sessions?

OR

DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE is really flexible (like 'printf') and it can be use, for instance to return some value from a stored procedure to a remote Java client?

TIA, -Ramon F. Herrera Received on Fri Jul 05 2002 - 23:48:14 CDT