October 1996
Intermediate to advanced
687 pages
16h 41m
English
Content preview from Advanced Oracle PL/SQL Programming with Packages
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Chapter 17. PLVhlp: Online Help for PL/SQL Programs
This chapter explores the PLVhlp (PL/Vision HeLP) package. You can use PLVhlp to provide online help for your own PL/SQL programs. Just imagine: If you or someone else in your development team forgets how to call a program or can't remember the name of the function to calculate the total something or other in the sales_analysis package, you can simply type:
SQL> exec sales_analysis.help
and find text scrolling across the screen, one page at a time, giving you just the information you need. Why, you might almost be able to actually share PL/SQL code across the enterprise in a practical way!
In the following sections, you will learn how to use PLVhlp, both in terms of creating text that can be made available for online help, and in terms of retrieving and displaying the online help text. I then take you step by step through the thought process and implementation behind PLVhlp.