ALTER PACKAGE Statement

14.3 ALTER PACKAGE Statement

The ALTER PACKAGE statement explicitly recompiles a package specification, body, or both. Explicit recompilation eliminates the need for implicit runtime recompilation and prevents associated runtime compilation errors and performance overhead.

Because all objects in a package are stored as a unit, the ALTER PACKAGE statement recompiles all package objects. You cannot use the ALTER PROCEDURE statement or ALTER FUNCTION statement to recompile individually a procedure or function that is part of a package.

Note:

This statement does not change the declaration or definition of an existing package. To redeclare or redefine a package, use the "CREATE PACKAGE Statement", or the "CREATE PACKAGE BODY Statement" with the OR REPLACE clause.

Topics

Prerequisites

If the package is in the SYS schema, you must be connected as SYSDBA. Otherwise, the package must be in your schema or you must have ALTER ANY PROCEDURE system privilege.

Syntax

alter_package ::=

Description of the illustration alter_package.eps

package_compile_clause ::=

Description of the illustration package_compile_clause.eps

(compiler_parameters_clause ::=)

Semantics

alter_package

schema

Name of the schema containing the package. Default: your schema.

package_name

Name of the package to be recompiled.

{ EDITIONABLE | NONEDITIONABLE }

Specifies whether the package becomes an editioned or noneditioned object if editioning is later enabled for the schema object type PACKAGE in schema. Default: EDITIONABLE. For information about altering editioned and noneditioned objects, see Oracle Database Development Guide.

package_compile_clause

Recompiles the package specification, body, or both.

See compile_clause and compiler_parameters_clause semantics.

Examples

Example 14-3 Recompiling a Package

This statement explicitly recompiles the specification and body of the hr.emp_mgmt package.

See "CREATE PACKAGE Statement" for the example that creates this package.

ALTER PACKAGE emp_mgmt COMPILE PACKAGE;

If the database encounters no compilation errors while recompiling the emp_mgmt specification and body, then emp_mgmt becomes valid. The user hr can subsequently invoke or reference all package objects declared in the specification of emp_mgmt without runtime recompilation. If recompiling emp_mgmt results in compilation errors, then the database returns an error and emp_mgmt remains invalid.

The database also invalidates all objects that depend upon emp_mgmt. If you subsequently reference one of these objects without explicitly recompiling it first, then the database recompiles it implicitly at run time.

To recompile the body of the emp_mgmt package in the schema hr, issue this statement:

ALTER PACKAGE hr.emp_mgmt COMPILE BODY;

If the database encounters no compilation errors while recompiling the package body, then the body becomes valid. The user hr can subsequently invoke or reference all package objects declared in the specification of emp_mgmt without runtime recompilation. If recompiling the body results in compilation errors, then the database returns an error message and the body remains invalid.

Because this statement recompiles the body and not the specification of emp_mgmt, the database does not invalidate dependent objects.