Oracle Built−in Packages- P102: Ah, for the good old days of Version of PL /SQL! Life was so simple then. No stored procedures or functions and certainly no packages. You had your set of built−in functions, like SUBSTR and TO_DATE. You had the IF statement and various kinds of loops. With these tools at hand, you built your batch−processing scripts for execution in SQL*Plus, and you coded your triggers in SQL*Forms , and you went home at night content with a good day's work done. | Appendix A What s on the Companion Disk Index-by PL SQL table type 251 BOOLEAN 252 Exceptions may raise any of the exceptions listed in the following table. Error Code Description ORA-20000 A package was specified. DESCRIBE_PROCEDURE currently allows you to request only describes for top-level standalone programs procedure and functions or programs within a package. ORA-20001 You requested a describe of a procedure or function that does not exist within the package. ORA-20002 You requested a describe of a procedure or function that is remote either by including a database link or by passing a program name that is actually a synonym for a program defined using a database link . DESCRIBE_PROCEDURE is currently unable to describe remote objects. ORA-20003 You requested describe of an object that is marked invalid. You can describe only valid objects. Recompile the object and then describe it. ORA-20004 There was a syntax error in the specification of the object s name. Notice that these exceptions are not defined in the specification of the package. Instead DESCRIBE_PROCEDURE simply calls RAISE_APPLICATION_ERROR with the error numbers listed earlier. These error numbers may therefore conflict with your own -20NNN error number usages this is a very bad design decision on Oracle s part . If you embed calls to DESCRIBE_PROCEDURE inside your application or utility watch out for the confusion such conflicts can cause. Restrictions There are several limitations on using DESCRIBE_PROCEDURE You cannot describe remote objects . PL SQL program elements that are defined in another database instance . You cannot get a describe or a listing of all elements defined in a package specification. You need to know the name of the procedure or function within the package in other to get a describe of it. will not show you the internal structure attributes of Oracle8 elements such as object types .
