Oracle SQL*Plus: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

Executing Scripts

iSQL*Plus provides you with two mechanisms for running SQL*Plus scripts. Which you use depends largely on where the script is located. One method is optimized for running scripts off a web server (or FTP server) over the Internet. The other method, slightly more cumbersome, allows you to run scripts from your workstation's hard drive.

Using the @ Command

In Chapter 2, you saw how to use the @ command to execute a script file containing SQL*Plus commands, SQL statements, and PL/SQL blocks. You can use the @ command in iSQL*Plus but only to execute scripts over the Internet. For example, suppose that you had the following commands in a file named login.sql that was accessible from a web server:

SET ECHO ON
SET MARKUP HTML PREFORMAT ON
SET PAGESIZE 20

You could easily invoke this file to configure your environment each time you logged in to iSQL*Plus. You would use an @ command similar to the following:

@http://gennick.com/login

Figure 3-12 shows what it would look like to execute this script.

Figure 3-12. Executing a script from the Internet

You can't use the @ command to execute scripts on the server. For security reasons, you are not allowed to use iSQL*Plus as a mechanism for accessing files on the server. You also can't use the @ command to execute scripts located on your client PC because iSQL*Plus, running on the database server as it does, has no way to access files ...