Advanced Oracle PL/SQL Programming with Packages

4.4. Installing Online Help for PL/Vision

PL/Vision takes advantage of the online help architecture of PLVhlp. If you choose to install the set of parallel help packages for PL/Vision, users will be able to request help during their SQL*Plus sessions on any of the PL/Vision packages.

To install the PL/Vision help packages, follow these steps:

1. Set the default directory in SQL*Plus to the directory containing the PL/Vision software. Connect through SQL*Plus to the PLV account.

2. Run the PL/Vision help installation as follows:

   SQL> @plvinsth

You will then have created a help package for each PL/Vision package. The naming convention for these packages is pkg_hlp, where pkg is the PL/Vision package name. For example, the help text for the PLVio package is contained in the PLVio_hlp package. The help packages consist only of help text in the form of PL/SQL comment blocks; these packages do not have bodies.

See Section 4.5 for more information about how to access the PL/Vision online help text.

4.4.1. Special Handling for PLVdyn

As I explain in Chapter 19, you may want to install a copy of PLVdyn in the account of each developer who will be using this functionality. This step will avoid many potential headaches. If you are going to do this, you should take the following steps after installing PL/Vision and creating all synonyms:

1. Connect to the account in which you wish to install a private copy of PLVdyn. Let's call it the DEV account.

2. Drop the private synonym for PLVdyn in your user account ...