paperlined.org
apps > oracle > pl_sql

document updated 14 years ago, on Dec 11, 2009

DBMS_OUTPUT is what's used to output simple debugging/log information. Unfortunately, it doesn't print out in real-time, rather it queues all the lines up, and only gives them to the user at the very end.

Are there any alternatives that can allow you to see debugging messages earlier on?

AskTom's my_dbms_output package
write debugging output to a separate table that gets routinely read by another query
- doing this with autonomous transactions is good because it means you don't have to commit your main transaction
write debugging output via DBMS_PIPE, and have a second process read from that pipe frequently (longer example) (O'Reilly book)
UTIL_FILE — package for writing to files
TEXT_IO — package for writing to files
UTL_TCP — package for sending data via TCP (example) (example #2)