Advanced Oracle PL/SQL Programming with Packages

17.1. Who Needs Online Help?

PL/Vision contains many packages, with many programs in each package. Despite its complexity, since I am the author of PL/Vision I should be intimately familiar with all aspects of the product. So you can imagine my frustration when I can't remember precisely how to call one of my own packaged programs, and have to go scrounging through the source code to figure it out. I fume to myself: "You wrote this stuff! Can't you remember what it does and how it does it?" But the sad fact is that I cannot remember all the finer nuances of my finer creations. As a result, valuable moments are lost from my life.

What I really need is online help so that when I am confused, I can type in a short, easy-to-remember command (along the lines of HELP!) and get the information I need.

To give you an understanding of my frustration, I offer the following transcript of a session with SQL*Plus (words in italics reflect the inner thoughts of yours truly trying to get something done).

I fire up SQL*Plus. On the one hand, I sigh at having to deal with this command-line, non-GUI interface. On the other hand, I know that this is the fastest, leanest environment in which to compile and run PL/SQL programs. Here I go...

SQL>

All right, now I want to parse a string into separate tokens. Let's see, that's gotta be the PLVlex package and the getnext function.

SQL> VARIABLE toke VARCHAR2(30); SQL> exec :toke := PLVlex.getnext ('this is it'); begin :toke := PLVlex.getnext ('this is ...