Re: Is PL/SQL good for one thing only?

jpanico_at_netcom.com (Joe Panico) wrote:
>
>Hi,
>

[Good stuff smipped for space reasons]

> I would like to be able to step through the
>USER_TABLES view and print out the structure of each USER_TABLE that meets
>certain criteria. But I want control of the formatting of the output, so that I could see
>something like the output of the DESCRIBE statement for each table.
>
>Can someone at Oracle say whether this is possible with the base PL/SQL package
>and comment on the flexibility of PL/SQL in general?
>
>Thanks
>--
>
>Joe Panico
>NeXTStep/OpenStep Developer
>BLaCKSMITH Inc.
>
>jpanico_at_netcom.com
>
>/* Please no NeXTMail, I can't read it at this address */
>

PL/SQL can NOT (yet) execute a sql statement with a variable as the table name. You can load "temporary" tables from seperate descre=
te SQL statements and then use that temporary table in a relatively generic fashion. (I have used such contructs for modeling varied=
 business order allocation rules). In general accessing different tables based upon different conditions would tell me there are des=

BTW For what you need SQL*Plus is more than adequate! You can define formatting commands to display a single record (such as the tab= le name) over multiple lines. With a little effort you can duplicate the "describe" command for all of the tables the user owns -- a= s well as specific database dictionary criteria.

Lawrence V. Rohrer
1500 Adams #105
Costa Mesa, California 92626
lrohrer_at_earthlink.net
http://www.earthlink.net/~lrohrer/index.html Received on Thu Sep 21 1995 - 00:00:00 CEST