A script-enabled browser is required for this page to function properly.

About the Tools built-in packages

Several client-side built-in packages are provided that contain many PL/SQL constructs you can reference while building applications or debugging your application code. These built-in packages are not installed as extensions to the package STANDARD. As a result, any time you reference a construct in one of the packages, you must prefix it with the package name (for example, TEXT_IO.PUT_LINE).

The Tools built-in packages are:

Built-in package

Description

DDE

Provides Dynamic Data Exchange support within Reports Builder components.

DEBUG

Provides procedures, functions, and exceptions for when debugging your PL/SQL program units. Use these built-in subprograms to create debug triggers and set breakpoints with triggers.

EXEC_SQL

Provides procedures and functions for executing dynamic SQL within PL/SQL code written for   Reports Builder applications.

LIST

Provides procedures, functions, and exceptions you can use to create and maintain lists of character strings (VARCHAR2). This provides a means of creating arrays in PL/SQL Version 1.

ORA_FFI

Provides a foreign function interface for invoking C functions in a dynamic library.

ORA_JAVA

Provides an interface for invoking Java classes from PL/SQL.

ORA_NLS

Enables you to extract high-level information about your current language environment.

This information can be used to inspect attributes of the language, enabling you to customize your applications to use local date and number format. Information about character set collation and the character set in general can also be obtained.

Facilities are also provided for retrieving the name of the current language and character set, allowing you to create applications that test for and take advantage of special cases.

ORA_PROF

Provides procedures, functions, and exceptions you can use for tuning your PL/SQL program units (for example, examining how much time a specific piece of code takes to run).

TEXT_IO

Provides constructs that allow you to read and write information from and to files.

There are several procedures and functions available in Text_IO, falling into the following categories:

  • file operations. The FILE_TYPE record, the FOPEN and IS_OPEN functions, and the FCLOSE procedure enable you to define FILE_TYPE variables, open files, check for open files, and close open files, respectively.
  • output (write) operations. The PUT, PUTF, PUT_LINE, and NEW_LINE procedures enable you to write information to an open file or output it to the PL/SQL Interpreter.
  • input (read) operations. The GET_LINE procedure enables you to read a line from an open file.

TOOL_ENV

Enables you to interact with Oracle environment variables by retrieving their values for use in subprograms.

TOOL_ERR

Enables you to access and manipulate the error stack created by other built-in packages such as DEBUG.

In addition to using exceptions to signal errors, some built-in packages (for example, the DEBUG package) provide additional error information. This information is maintained in the form of an "error stack".

The error stack contains detailed error codes and associated error messages. Errors on the stack are indexed from zero (oldest) to n-1 (newest), where n is the number of errors currently on the stack. Using the services provided by the TOOL_ERR package, you can access and manipulate the error stack.

TOOL_RES

Provides a means of extracting string resources from a resource file with the goal of making PL/SQL code more portable by isolating all textual data in the resource file. 

The following packages are used only internally by Oracle Reports. There are no subprograms available for external use with these packages.

Built-in package

Description

ORA_DE

Contains constructs used by Reports for private PL/SQL services.

STPROC

Calls subprograms stored in the database. Calls to this package are automatically generated.

JNI

Facilitates calling Java from PL/SQL.

See also

About built-in packages

About the Reports Builder built-in package (SRW)