Is SQLcl the Next Generation of SQL*Plus?

Zohar Elkayam
www.realdbamagic.com
Twitter: @realmgic
Is SQLcl the Next
Generation of SQL*Plus?

Who am I?
• Zohar Elkayam, CTO at Brillix
• DBA, team leader, database trainer, public speaker, and a
senior consultant for over 18 years
• Oracle ACE Associate
• Involved with Big Data projects since 2011
• Blogger – www.realdbamagic.com and www.ilDBA.co.il
http://brillix.co.il2

About Brillix
• Brillix is a leading company that specialized in Data
Management
• We provide professional services and consulting for Databases,
Security, NoSQL, and Big Data solutions
• Providing the Brillix Big Data Experience Center
3

Agenda
• SQL*Plus and what is it good for
• Introducing SQLcl
• Installing and Using SQLcl
• SQLcl cool features and a demo
• Q&A

SQL*Plus
• Introduced in Oracle 5 (1985)
• Looks very simple but has tight integration with other Oracle
infrastructure and tools
• Very good for reporting, scripting, and automation
• Replaced old CLI tool called …
UFI (“User Friendly Interface”)

What’s Wrong With SQL*Plus?
• Nothing really wrong with SQL*Plus – it is being updated constantly
but it is missing a lot of trivial functionality
• SQL*Plus forces us to use GUI tools to complete some basic tasks
• Easy to understand, a bit hard to use
• Not easy for new users or developers

Introducing: SQLcl
• SQLcl is a new command line interface (CLI) for SQL developers,
report users, and DBAs
• It is part of the SQL Developer suite – developed by the same
team: Oracle Database Development Tools Team
• Does (or will do) most of what SQL*Plus can do, and much more
• Main focus: making life easier for CLI users
• Minimal installation, minimal requirements

Current Status (May 2016)
• Still in Early Adopter version
• current version: 4.2.0.16.131.1023 RC, May 13, 2016
• QA is still logging bugs from SQL*Plus regression tests
• Version comes out every couple of months
• Adding support for existing SQL*Plus commands/syntax
• Adding new commands and functionality
• The team is accepting bug reports and enhancement requests
from the public

Prerequisites
• Very small footprint: 12MB
• Tool is Java based so it can run on Windows, Linux, and OS/X
• Java 7/8 JRE (runtime environment - no need for JDK)
• No need for installer or setup
• No need for any other additional software or special license
• No need for Oracle Client

Installing
• Download from: SQLcl Developer tool OTN Page
• Unzip the file
• Verify has +x if in Linux/OSX
• Run it

Running SQLcl

Connecting to the Database
• When no Oracle Client: Using thin connection:
EZConnect connect style out of the box
connect host:port/service
• Support TNS, Thick and LDAP connection when Oracle home
detected
• Auto-complete connection strings from last connections AND
tnsnames.ora

Object Completion and Easy Edit
• Use the tab key to complete commands
• Can be used to list tables, views or other queriable objects
• Can be used to replace the * with actual column names
• Use the arrow keys to move around the command
• Use CTRL+W and CTRL+S to jump to the beginning/end of
commands

Command History
• 100 command history buffer
• Commands are persistent between sessions (watch out for security!)
• User SET NOHISTORY to blacklist commands to not go into history
• Use UP and DOWN arrow keys to access the old commands
• Usage:
history
history usage
history time
history script
history full
history clear [session?]
• Load from history into command buffer:
history <number>

Describe, Information and Info+
• Describe lists the column of the tables just like SQL*Plus
• Information shows column names, default values, indexes and
constraints.
• In 12c database information shows table statistics and In
memory status
• Works for table, views, sequences, and code objects
• Info+ shows additional information regarding column statistics
and column histograms

SHOW ALL and SHOW ALL+
• The show all command is familiar from SQL*Plus – it will show
all the parameters for the SQL*Plus settings
• The show all+ command will show the show all command and
some perks: available tns entries, list of pdbs, connection
settings, instance settings, nls settings, and more!

Repeat
• Repeats the current SQL or PL/SQL in the buffer the specified
number of times with specified sleep intervals
• Looks like the “watch” command in Linux
• Usage:
repeat <iterations> <sleep>

Repeat as “tail -f alert.log”
• Jeff Smith (@thatjeffsmith) had a cool implementation for the
repeat command on Oracle 12c:
• tail –f on the alert log
SELECT
To_Char(Originating_Timestamp, 'DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI:SSxFF') Time_Entry,
substr(trim(message_text), 0, 75) || '...' ABBR_MESSAGE_TEXT
FROM X$dbgalertext
ORDER BY Originating_Timestamp DESC, indx desc
fetch FIRST 15 ROWS ONLY;

DDL and DBMS_METADATA
• Extract DDL of objects using a single command
DDL <object name>
• Uses DBMS_METADATA.GET_DDL to extract the object
• We can modify the output using SET DDL:
SET DDL
SET DDL [[ PRETTY | SQLTERMINATOR | CONSTRAINTS | REF_CONSTRAINTS |
CONSTRAINTS_AS_ALTER|OID | SIZE_BYTE_KEYWORD | PARTITIONING |
SEGMENT_ATTRIBUTES | STORAGE | TABLESPACE | SPECIFICATION |
BODY | FORCE | INSERT | |INHERIT | RESET] {on|off}
]| OFF ]

OERR
• OERR shows an error message just like the oerr in the
command line (in *nix systems)
SQL> oerr ora-0
00000. 00000 - "normal, successful completion"
*Cause: Normal exit.
*Action: None.
SQL> oerr ora-1
00001. 00000 - "unique constraint (%s.%s) violated"
*Cause: An UPDATE or INSERT statement attempted to insert a duplicate
key.
For Trusted Oracle configured in DBMS MAC mode, you may see
this message if a duplicate entry exists at a different level.
*Action: Either remove the unique restriction or do not insert the key.

Alias
• Alias is a command which allows us to save a SQL, PL/SQL or
SQL*Plus scripts, and assign it a shortcut command.
• Command can receive parameters using bind variables
• Aliases are session persistent and being saved
• Usage:
• alias - for list of aliases
• alias list <aliasName> - for definition
• Setting an alias:
• alias my_command=sql; (terminate with ;)
• alias my_code=begin command; end; (terminate with /)

Alias Example
• We’re tired of running the dbms_xplan after we explain a query
• So we set this alias:
alias plan=select * from table(dbms_xplan.display);
SQL> explain plan for select * From dual;
Explained.
SQL> plan
PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
---------------------------------------------------------------
Plan hash value: 272002086

CTAS
• Extract DDL for a table and use it to recreate another table
using select * from
• Useful when we want to copy a table with partitions or a primary
key
• Might not stay in the final version – have a lot of small and
annoying issues
• Usage:
ctas table new_table

SQLPATH
• SQLPATH is the order in which the CLI is looking for sql scripts
(both in SQL*Plus and SQLcl)
• Running a script not from the path requires full path location
• Default search order is:
1. Current cd directory
2. Current running directory
3. The rest of the sqlpath
• Show SQLPATH will show that current search path

CD command
• When we want to change the path in SQL*Plus, we usually can’t.
• SQLcl comes with CD command to change that path and make it
easier to run scripts:
• Usage:
cd /u01/app/oracle/scripts
Show SQLPATH

Bridge
• Used mainly to script data move between two connections from
the client (no server direct server connections)
• The following functionality is available:
1. Query tables in other connections
2. Query tables in multiple connections in the same statement
3. Insert data from one connection into another
4. Create a table and insert data into it from another connection

Bridge (cont.)
• Uses JDBC connection string to connect our client to the remote
connection.
• Creates a table with the results in the database
• Usage:
BRIDGE <targetTableName> as "<jdbcURL>"(<sqlQuery>);
• Example:
BRIDGE dept_remote as
“jdbc:oracle:thin:scott/tiger@localhost:1521/orcl"(select * from dept);

Pretty Input
• Using the SQL Developer formatting rules, it will change our input into
well formatted commands.
• Use the SQLFORMATPATH to point to the SQL Developer rule file (XML)
SQL> select * from dual;
D
-
X
SQL> format buffer;
1 SELECT
2 *
3 FROM
4* dual

SQL*Plus Output
• SQL*Plus output is generated as text tables
• We can output the data as HTML but the will take over
everything we do in SQL*Plus (i.e. describe command)
• We can’t use colors in our output
• We can’t generate other types of useful outputs (CSV is really
hard for example)

Generating Pretty Output
• Outputting query results becomes easier with the “set sqlformat”
command (also available in SQL Developer)
• We can create a query in the “regular” way and then switch
between the different output styles:
• ANSIConsole
• Fixed column size output
• XML or JSON output
• HTML output generates a built in search field and a responsive
html output for the result only

Generating Other Useful Outputs
• We can generate loader ready output (with “|” as a delimiter)
• We can generate insert commands
• We can easily generate CSV output
• Usage:
set sqlformat { csv,html,xml,json,ansiconsole,insert,
loader,fixed,default}

Load Data From CSV File
• Loads a comma separated value (csv) file into a table
• The first row of the file must be a header row and the file must
be encoded UTF8
• The load is processed with 50 rows per batch
• Usage:
LOAD [schema.]table_name[@db_link] file_name

SCRIPT
• SQLcl exposes javascript scripting with nashorn to make things
very scriptable
• This means we can create our own commands inside SQLcl
using JavaScript
• For more information (and DEMO), check out Kris Rice’s blog
(product manger for SQLcl): http://krisrice.blogspot.com/

Conclusion
• We talked about SQL*Plus and SQLcl differences
• We saw how to start working with SQLcl
• We tried some of its new features
• There are more new features coming and since it's and EA
version, more bug fixes to come
• I’ve been using this tool for over a year now – it’s just getting
better all the time!

What Did We Not Talk About?
• Official release date (but rumer says it will be shipped out with
12cR2
• The SQLcl is very open to ideas – check them out
• Bug reporting can be done on the community page:
https://community.oracle.com/community/database/developer-
tools/sql_developer/sqlcl

Useful Resources
• SQLcl OTN page:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-
tools/sqlcl/overview/index.html
• SQLcl Community page:
https://community.oracle.com/community/database/developer-
tools/sql_developer/sqlcl
• Kris Rice (@krisrice) manage Oracle SQL Developer team
Blog: http://krisrice.blogspot.com/
• Jeff Smith (@thatjeffsmith) Oracle SQL Developer Product Manager at
Oracle
Blog: http://www.thatjeffsmith.com/

Thank You
Zohar Elkayam
twitter: @realmgic
Zohar@Brillix.co.il
www.realdbamagic.com

Is SQLcl the Next Generation of SQL*Plus?

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