Ad hoc querying Oracle PL/SQL - for SQL Server developer

Question

I used to do Oracle development many many years ago. I have spent most of the past 15 years doing mainly SQL Server, and where I have done Oracle work, been insulated from the workings by Web services etc.

My question seems to have been asked on the web a few times, but it seems difficult somehow to communicate - at least judging by the answers. I very much appreciate that tools and functionality differ, know I have to learn new things, but this is so simple, yet seems so hard to do.

I am looking to do some ad-hoc queries on the database. At the moment we are using SQL Navigator - I am open to using other tools...

In SQL Server Management Studio, if you open a query window, type a bit of SQL that retuns a value or a set, you get a nice display of the rows or values in a results window.

I've gathered that with Oracle PL/SQL things are a bit different, worked out that I need to return a cursor - but how do I get a tool to display the results?

I started simple:

    declare 
        my_id number := 356655;
        cursor c1  is select my_id from dual;

    begin
        open c1;   
    end;

This runs fine - but how do I see the results? Are there any tools that deal with this as 'nicely' as SSMS? I am used to being able to do a lot of this, including stuff like

(perhaps not exactly the right syntax? but you get the idea...)

declare 
    my_id number := 356655;
    cursor c1  is select name from my_table where id = my_id;

begin
    open c1;   

And having the results displayed to me as text/grid. Ideally that there is a nice solution. Some spiffy new tool, maybe?

Answer 1

With SQL Developer or SQL*Plus you can use a bind variable declared before the PL/SQL block:

variable rc refcursor;
declare 
  my_id number := 356655;
begin
  open :rc for select my_id from dual;
end;
/

print rc

RC
-------------------------------
356655                                  

You can also use a bind variable within the query, which can be useful:

variable my_id number;
variable rc refcursor;
execute :my_id := 356655;

begin
  open :rc for select :my_id from dual;
end;
/

print rc

The variable and print commands are covered in the SQL*Plus documentation, which largely applies to SQL Developer as well - that has its own documentation, including the commands that are carried over from SQL*Plus.

If you have a function that returns a ref cursor then you can call that in a query, as select func(val) from dual, and then the results can go in a grid; or you can call the function (or procedure) with the same :rc bind variable and print it. But I'm not sure either is helpful if you are only doing ad hoc queries.

On the other hand, using a PL/SQL block for an ad hoc query seems a little heavy-handed, even if your queries are complicated. You'd need a good reason to open a cursor for a select statement from within a block, rather than just running the select directly. (Not sure if that's a SQL Server thing or if you actually have a real need to do this!). If you're just running a query inside the block, you don't need the block, even if you want to keep a bind variable for the values you're using in the query:

variable my_id number;
execute :my_id := 356655;
select :my_id from dual;

    :MY_ID
----------
    356655 

Answer 2

I use Oracle SQL Developer.

Anyway, this should work in any oracle sql client:

If you just want to see your results, you can use

dbms_output.put_line('Foo' || somevar || ' bar');

Before this, run

 SET SERVEROUTPUT ON 

Check the examples at docs.oracle.com

Answer 3

I would suggest using sql developer available free from the oracle website. There is a button which allows you to run sql as a script which will get back what you want. SSMS doesn't work with pl/sql.