Question

I didn’t find much data about the internals of PL/Scope.

I’d like to use it to analyze identifiers in PL/SQL scripts. Does it work only on Oracle 11g instances? Can I reference its dlls to use it on a machine with only ORACLE 9/10 installed?

In a related manner, do I have to execute the script in order for its identifiers to be analyzed?

Answer 1

To answer the easy question first, we do not have to execute the program unit. We have to compile it. That is relatively simple:

SQL> alter session set plscope_settings='IDENTIFIERS:ALL'
  2  /

Session altered.

SQL> alter function str_to_number_tokens compile
  2  /

Function altered.

SQL> SELECT LPAD(' ', level*2, ' ') || name AS name, type, usage, usage_id, line, col
  2  FROM   user_identifiers
  3  START WITH usage_context_id = 0
  4  CONNECT BY PRIOR usage_id = usage_context_id;

NAME                           TYPE               USAGE         USAGE_ID       LINE        COL
------------------------------ ------------------ ----------- ---------- ---------- ----------
  STR_TO_NUMBER_TOKENS         FUNCTION           DECLARATION          1          1         10
    STR_TO_NUMBER_TOKENS       FUNCTION           DEFINITION           2          1         10
      P_STRING                 FORMAL IN          DECLARATION          3          2         10
      P_SEPARATOR              FORMAL IN          DECLARATION          4          3         13
        P_SEPARATOR            FORMAL IN          ASSIGNMENT           5          3         13
      RETURN_VALUE             VARIABLE           DECLARATION          6          6          5
      REGEX_STR                VARIABLE           DECLARATION          7          7          5
      REGEX_STR                VARIABLE           ASSIGNMENT           8         10          9
        P_SEPARATOR            FORMAL IN          REFERENCE            9         10         31
      REGEX_STR                VARIABLE           REFERENCE           10         17         46
      P_STRING                 FORMAL IN          REFERENCE           11         17         36
      REGEX_STR                VARIABLE           REFERENCE           12         16         47
      P_STRING                 FORMAL IN          REFERENCE           13         16         37
      REGEX_STR                VARIABLE           REFERENCE           14         12         57
      P_STRING                 FORMAL IN          REFERENCE           15         12         47
      RETURN_VALUE             VARIABLE           ASSIGNMENT          16         14         22
      RETURN_VALUE             VARIABLE           REFERENCE           17         19         16

17 rows selected.

SQL> 

(Credit where credit is due, I took that query from my mate Tim Hall’s Oracle-Base site)

Incidentally, note that PL/Scope operates on named PL/SQL programs (procedures, functions, packages, etc). It doesn’t work on anonymous PL/SQL blocks. I mention this because you talk of “scripts” rather than programs. It won’t do anything with a SQL script containing some PL/SQL blocks.

The other thing to bear in mind is that PL/Scope populates tables on the SYSAUX tablespace, and can chew up a lot of storage. That’s why it isn’t run by default, and it’s why we should use it judiciously.

As for backwards compatibility: it is a new feature in 11g, and it is a compiler feature at that. So I doubt whether it is something you could just crowbar into a 10g install.