Tag Archives: Scripting

Your library is your paradise

EvROCS Posted on by

So far, in the previous post  and the one before that, we have seen what is necessary to register some Javascript as a custom command in SQLcl.To be honest, with all the complexity that is needed, I would be surprised if anybody made it to here.I am very enthusiastic about the scripting possibilities in SQLcl, but if registering a very simple script with a handful of lines requires more than a screen full of extra code just to be able to make it available as a custom command, I can imagine not a lot of people wanting to go there. I myself copied the extra code from one script to the next, until I got sick and tired of it. So, with the wise words of the Dutch medieval Philosopher Desiderius Erasmus in mind “Your library is your paradise” I turned the code I had so far into a … Continue reading →

Hit the road Jack, and don’t you come back no more….

EvROCS Posted on by

In my blogpost “Being in command“, about custom commands I said that I couldn’t find a way to unregister  a registered custom command, other than restarting SQLcl.That is still true. I couldn’t.But Philipp Salvisberg could. He was able to find a way to do just that. That means that with his hard work as input, we are now able to Unregister a previously registered custom command.That makes it possible to register the command in an edited new version without the need to restart SQLcl. So, like Jack in the famous song, let’s try to kick a registered custom command out of our SQLcl house. Go straight to Introduction First of all: this post will deal with the code needed to unregister a custom command.In my humble opinion just, like registering a command, it takes too much code and effort to be considered user friendly.In my next blog post I will … Continue reading →

Being in command

EvROCS Posted on by

This post is the third one of three that together are an introduction to scripting in SQLcl.Also read part 1 and part 2. In the previous post I’ve created functionality for SQLcl that it doesn’t have “out of the box”.In this post I’ll continue to build on that script, but the information here is valid for any JavaScript script you develop for SQLcl. In short: I built some functionality in JavaScript that can read a client file and place the contents in a bindvariable.This script resides in a file called “file2bind.js” so we can use it by telling SQLcl we want to run a script with this name and certain parameter values.Executing that script is done using the built in command “script” As I’ve said a couple of times in that post: I’m lazy.So typing “script ” every time I want to execute this script will get on my nerves … Continue reading →

A Person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read

EvROCS Posted on by

This post is the second one of three that together are an introduction to scripting in SQLcl.Also read part 1 and part 3. The title of this blogpost is (supposedly) a quote from Mark Twain, and I completely agree with it.I was reminded of this quote when I was working on the subject of this blogpost. In SQL*Plus you can’t read the contents of a client file.Well, to be honest, you can do “get scriptname.sql” to place the contents of a SQL script in the execution buffer.Or you could copy the file you want to read to the server and use utl_file or an external table definition.But other than that, nothing.No way to just read the contents of any client file. Ok, SQL*Plus is limited, no news there.Let’s turn to the favorite command line tool of the 21st century, SQLcl. SQLcl is capable of reading client files and processing them. … Continue reading →

When great just isn’t good enough

EvROCS Posted on by

This post is the first one of three that together are an introduction to scripting in SQLcl.Also read part 2 and part 3. For many years now SQLcl is my favorite command line tool to connect to Oracle databases. (available at the bottom of the SQL Developer download page)It does (practically) everything SQL*Plus does and a whole lot more. It has many capabilities that SQL*Plus just doesn’t have.But this post is not about those goodies SQLcl delivers, it’s more or less about what is doesn’t…. No matter how good we think a tool is, and I think SQLcl is great, there will always be things missing, or not quite the way we would want them to be.SQLcl is no exception to this rule.Inevitably we run into something that makes us think “I wish it could do ….”.The team that brings us SQLcl (and SQL Developer and Datamodeler and ORDS) is … Continue reading →