A number of people have asked about adding some
"built-in" values, including ROLE, TRANSACTION,
and CONNECTION.

My immediate reaction is "you don't need to know
that," but the statement reminds me too much of
some operating system developers I've dealt with
who explained patiently that if I were doing anything
that required knowing the operating system version,
I was doing something wrong. So I feel guilty.

And, of course, there are good reasons for knowing
the role which have been explained widely. And
there are legitimate reasons for knowing the transaction,
having to do with replication. And, for those who
insist that everyone sign on as SYSDBA, I guess knowing
the connection is important too. Besides, having lost
the previous two arguments, I'm already in full retreat.

So, what would the world think of reserving 174 to
be blr_user_id. That would take a single blr argument
which would be one of the set

blr_user_transaction
blr_user_connection
blr_user_role
...

where ... would expand as necessary.


Thoughts?


Ann