On 2012-06-22 14:09, ktadimeti wrote:

> I wish to output text from a stored procedure. How do I do this?
> Is there an alternative to the DBMS_OUTPUT package in oracle, or even a simple PRINT statement?

I'm not sure I understood you correctly, but you can just select rows
from a "selectable" stored procedure.
A trivial example:

create procedure TXOUT
returns (SINGLE_ROW varchar(200))
as
SINGLE_ROW = 'the first row';
suspend; -- returns a record

SINGLE_ROW = 'the second row';
suspend; -- returns a record
end

When issuing

select * from TXOUT

you get

SINGLE_ROW
==============================
the first row
the second row

Obviously, the text can come from whatever source you need (e.g. can be
selected from a table inside the procedure).

That's not exactly what DBMS_OUTPUT in Oracle does, but can serve as a
simple debug output (in fact DBMS_OUTPUT package usually doesn't serve
any other purpose either). The drawback is that it doesn't work with
triggers (but you haven't mentioned triggers, have you? ;) ).

Have you thought about inserting the text into a predefined table and
selecting it from another piece of code? I suppose that's more or less
what DBMS_OUTPUT does - PUT_LINE inserts a line of text into a "well
known" table, while GET_LINE retrieves the oldest row and deletes it. I
think this functionality can be easily implemented with two stored
procedures and a table.

regards
Tomasz

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__--==============================--__
__--== Tomasz Tyrakowski ==--__
__--== SOL-SYSTEM ==--__
__--== http://www.sol-system.pl ==--__
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