If you’re browsing your packages using the Connections panel, you have a nice tree navigator to click around your packages and your variable, procedure, and functions.
Click, click, click all day long, click, click, click while I sing this song…
But
What if you drill into your PL/SQL source from the worksheet and don’t have the Tree expanded?
Let’s say you’re working on your script, something like -
Hmm, what goes next again?
So I need to reacquaint myself with just what my beer package requires, so I’m going to drill into it by doing a DESCRIBE (via SHIFT+F4), and now I have the package open.
The package is open but the tree hasn’t auto-expanded.
Please don’t tell me I have to do the click-click-click thing in the tree!?!
Just Open the Quick Outline Panel
Do you see it?
Just right click in the procedure editor – select the ‘Quick Outline’ in the context menu, and voila!
The navigational power of the tree, without needing to drill down the tree itself.
If I want to drill into my procedure declaration, just click on said procedure name in the Quick Outline panel. This works for both package specs and bodies. Technically you can use this for stand alone procedures and functions, but the real power is demonstrated for packages.
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Nov 29, 2012 @ 17:27:58
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for the Outline Pane tip.
It’s odd that the Outline Pane isn’t available from the View menu like most if not all of the other tool panes are. If not for tips like this or close observation of the context sensitive menus I wouldn’t even know it exists.
This pane would be even better if showed functions and procedures nested inside the top level functions and procedures, and of coarse further nestings inside of nested functions and procedures.
Nov 29, 2012 @ 17:32:00
Agreed on all counts. The lack of the View menu placement might be due to the fact that the Quick Outline panel has no context out of the Procedure Editor. Not sure that’s a good enough reason though and will see what we can do to amend this in a future release.
Thanks for your support David and for the input!
Nov 30, 2012 @ 09:46:38
Hi Jeff,
Since you brought up shift-f4 describe, I’m seeing some behavior that I find somewhat annoying. If I have just the package name typed in e.g. my_package the describe works fine. If I have input after the package name it does not work. e.g my_package.my_function I get “No object found my_package.my_function”. If I want to do the describe, I need to erase everything after the “.” in my worksheet. Is this expected behavior? Seems like it should strip back to the package name and do the describe. Im running version 3.2.20.09 on Mac OSX Lion.
Thanks for the great blog!
Nov 30, 2012 @ 09:52:14
I think technically it IS the expected behavior, since technically your my_function is not a database object, but rather a part of my_package. Now, if you ask me, and you are so I’ll answer, I think we should be smart enough to figure out what we really want to describe is my_package.
There’s another way to do this, and it’s what I do instead of backspacing through the .my_function( text: highlight my_package, then hit SHIFT+F4.
I’ll talk to the developer to see if we can’t be a little less precise when describing package calls.
Nov 30, 2012 @ 10:02:32
Thanks for the highlighting tip – hadn’t thought of that!
Nov 30, 2012 @ 14:12:23
An even better solution – ctrl+click on the word, that will work RIGHT NOW. Going to blog this immediately
The developer tells me he has fixed the describe bug too
Dec 03, 2012 @ 00:44:55
Hi Jeff,
SHIFT+F4 shows me the package specification. Any similar shortcuts for viewing the package body as well?
Dec 03, 2012 @ 10:53:35
There’s a button in the editor to auto-toggle the body.
Dec 05, 2012 @ 00:58:49
Thanks Jeff.
There are two ways:
1. Using the Open Body/Spec button on the toolbar
2. CTRL + double click on a function/procedure in the package spec
However, I am using version 3.2.20.09 which exhibits this bug for #1:
https://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=10675482