Advanced iSQLPlus and SQLPlus Features in Oracle Database 10g Release 2

Advanced iSQL*Plus and SQL*Plus Features in Oracle Database 10g Release 2

Oracle 10g Release 2 offers several new features with SQL*Plus and iSQL*Plus. Following is a short overview of the new features that will be included in the upcoming release:

• 10g Release 2 offers the new XQUERY SQL*Plus command and iSQL*Plus support. XQUERY allows you to enter XQuery statements and retrieve results in SQL*Plus. Following is an example of this new feature:

   SQL> XQUERY for $i in ora:view("documents") 2 return $i 3 / Result Sequence -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <ROW><DOC_ID>69923</DOC_ID><DOC_TITLE> Earthquake triggers deadly tsunami </DOC_TITLE> <DOC_DATE>20-MAY-2005</DOC_DATE> ... 

  
  

• Along with the new support for XQUERY, 10g Release 2 also introduces the SET XQUERY command to declare options used in XQuery statements. Following is a short summary of each option used with SET XQUERY:

  • BASEURI. This defines the base URL to use for the doc() and collection() functions. The default value is an empty string.

  • ORDERING. This allows you to specify whether the ordering mode used with XQuery statements is enabled. The default value is DEFAULT.

  • NODE. This allows you to specify the node identify preservation mode used with XQuery statements. The default value is DEFAULT.

  • CONTEXT. This allows you to set the default document context to be passed with XQuery statements. The default value is an empty string.

With Oracle 10g Release 2, the syntax for the SET SERVEROUTPUT command has been enhanced to allow a SIZE specification of UNLIMITED. The existing range of values for the SET SERVEROUTPUT command remains unchanged, but if no value is specified it will default to UNLIMITED. This new feature works in conjunction with the new maximum line size for DBMS_OUTPUT, which has been enhanced from 255 to 32,767 bytes.