This module has covered the SQL*Plus environment and how to use it to create good-looking reports. You learned how to edit a query within SQL*Plus and saw how to save, edit, and execute files. You experimented with SQL*Plus environment settings to modify column headings, page length and width, and add titles to your reports. You saw how you can add summaries and break points to your query using SQL*Plus commands.
Finally, you learned about saving the report you have created so you can print the report.
In this module, you learned how to:
- Describe SQL*Plus and identify when to use it
- Change text by using the in-line editor and run a query
- Change a query by using a text editor
- Save a query to a file, replace a file, edit a file
- Modify column headings and display width in a column
- Define the environment settings for SQL*Plus reports
- Describe what gets saved in a file when using
SPOOL
With Oracle's SQL*Plus utility, a command line utility for creating and querying database objects, end users are given unprecedented control over their own data. Both the users and developers benefit from this ability:
- the users because they can build reports, analyze information, modify their queries, and re-execute them, all in a matter of minutes, and
- the developers because they are relieved of the undesirable requirement of creating new reports.
Users are granted the power to look into their data, analyze it, and respond with a speed and thoroughness unimaginable just a few years ago. This leap in productivity is greatly extended if the 1) tables, 2) columns, and 3) data values are carefully crafted in English.
The time spent in the design process to name the objects consistently and descriptively will pay off quickly for the users, and therefore for the business.
Some administrators fear that turning query facilities over to end users will cripple the machine on which the facilities are used.
The fear is that users will write inefficient queries that will consume overwhelming numbers of CPU cycles, slowing the machine and every other user. Experience shows that this generally is not true. Users quickly learn which kinds of queries run fast, and which do not. Furthermore, most business intelligence and reporting tools available today can estimate the amount of time a query will take, and restrict access by 1) user, 2) time of day, or both to queries that would consume a disproportionate amount of resources.
In practice, the demands users make on a machine only occasionally get out of hand, but the benefits they derive far exceed the cost of the processing. Virtually any time you can move effort from a person to a machine, you save money.