Advanced Oracle PL/SQL Programming with Packages

16.2. Code Generated by PLVgen

With PLVgen, you can generate functions, procedures, packages, and variations on those. You have already seen examples of functions and procedures. The examples in this section demonstrate the other kinds of code generated from this package. You can also modify the contents of generated code by using the many different toggles.

16.2.1. Generating a Package

Don't get your hopes up too high. I can't generate a complete package for you. PLVgen can, on the other hand, generate a skeleton of the syntax required to build a package and also load it up with help text stubs and banners to break up the different elements of the package.

The header for the package generator is:

PROCEDURE pkg (name_in IN VARCHAR2);

You provide the name of the package, the procedure produced, and the code for a package (specification and body). Consider the following two commands executed in SQL*Plus:

SQL> exec PLVgen.usemax
SQL> exec PLVgen.pkg ('PLVfile');

Notice that I call PLVgen.usemax before generating my code. PLVgen.usemax turns on all available toggles for code content, including the CREATE OR REPLACE syntax, line numbers, program header, and help text stubs. These individual toggles and usemax are explained later in the chapter. The code generated by these commands is shown below.

1 CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE PLVfile 2 /* 3 || Program: PLVfile 4 || Author: Steven Feuerstein 5 || File: PLVfile.SQL 6 || Created: May 30, 1996 13:34:59 7 */ 8 /*HELP 9 Add help text here... ...