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

Chapter 14. Customizing Your SQL*Plus Environment

This chapter describes how you can modify the SQL*Plus environment to make things more convenient for you or for the users you support. A number of settings can be customized. Some, like the search path used for SQL scripts, are more useful than others. In addition, two SQL scripts are automatically run whenever you start SQL*Plus. These SQL scripts are useful, for example, if you have specific SET commands that you want to execute at the beginning of a session.

SQL*Plus Settings You Can Control

The specific customizations you can make may vary depending on the operating system and the SQL*Plus version. Generally, though, you need to be aware of the login scripts and the environment variable settings.

Two SQL scripts are executed whenever SQL*Plus starts up:

Site profile

The first script, known as the site profile, is named glogin.sql. It applies globally to all users on a particular computer.

User profile

The second script, known as the user profile (not the same thing as the product user profile discussed in Chapter 13), is named login.sql. Each user may have his or her own user profile script.

The most obvious use for these files is to execute SET commands to customize the environment settings to something other than their defaults.

Several operating system environment variables affect how SQL*Plus operates. Some of what these environment variables allow you to specify include:

SQLPATH

The search path to use for SQL scripts

LOCAL ...