Re: recovering data rows from PL/SQL scripts

man_at_sjoki.uta.fi wrote:
> (cut)

>
> However, I was wondering if I could force a PL/SQL procedure to
> print something to STDOUT?? dbms_output.put_line() does not
> work, since I can't give a "Set serveroutput on" -command
> in a perl script (nor in a PL/SQL procedure).
>
> So, simply: how do I force a PL/SQL procedure to print?

You can't ever force a PL/SQL procedure to print. dbms_output is just a big kludge. What the dbms_output.put_line() actually does is save the output in a temporary table and then send it to the SQL client.

However, kludge or not, the same strategy works just fine for debugging scripts that can't use dbms_output.

( forgive my pseudo code )

Create a logging table ahead of time.

	CREATE TABLE MY_MESSAGES ( 
		sequential-id-column, 
		text_column ) ;

Add lines such as the following to your PL/SQL script.

        INSERT INTO MY_MESSAGES ("This is what I want to print");

After running your script then examine the table

	SELECT text_column from MY_MESSAGES order 
		by sequential-id-column;