Advanced Oracle PL/SQL Programming with Packages

5.3. PLV: Top-Level Constants and Functions

The PLV (PL/Vision) package provides a single collection point for constants and basic functions used throughout the PL/Vision library of packages. See Chapter 6 for details.

5.3.1. PL/Vision constants

dbtab CONSTANT VARCHAR2(2) := 'DB';
pstab CONSTANT VARCHAR2(2) := 'PS';
file CONSTANT VARCHAR2(2) := 'F';
string CONSTANT VARCHAR2(2) := 'S';
stdout CONSTANT VARCHAR2(2) := 'SO';

Names of different repositories supported within PL/Vision. These are mostly used by PLVio and by users of PLVio to set up the source and target repositories for PL/SQL code.

c_datemask CONSTANT VARCHAR2(100) :=
   'FMMonth DD, YYYY FMHH24:MI:SS'

The default date format mask for PL/Vision .

5.3.2. Anchoring datatypes

plsql_identifier VARCHAR2(100) := 'IRRELEVANT';
max_varchar2 VARCHAR2(32767) := 'IRRELEVANT';
vcmax_len CONSTANT INTEGER := 32767;

The plsql_identifier variable offers a standard format for the declaration of any variables that will hold PL/SQL identifiers, such as table and column names.

The max_varchar2 variable offers a standard format for the declaration of any variables that require the maximum possible size for VARCHAR2 variables, which is 32,767 bytes and also reflected by the value of the vcmax_len constant.

5.3.3. Setting the date format mask

PROCEDURE set_datemask (datemask_in IN VARCHAR2 := c_datemask);

Sets the string used as the default date format mask within PL/Vision.

FUNCTION datemask RETURN VARCHAR2;

Returns the string ...