4.1. What Is PL/Vision?

As I've mentioned in earlier chapters, PL/Vision is a collection of PL/SQL packages and supporting SQL*Plus scripts that can change radically the way you develop applications with the PL/SQL language. This chapter describes the product in greater detail, lists the packages included in it, and provides instructions for installing the PL/Vision Lite Online Reference provided on the companion disk (view disk content online at http://examples.oreilly.com/advoracle).

4.1.1. The Benefits of PL/Vision

What can PL/Vision do for you? The possibilities are almost endless:

  • Improve your productivity. PL/Vision goes a long way towards helping you avoid reinventing the wheel. Need to change a long string into a word-wrapped paragraph? Use the PLVprs.wra procedure. Want to display the contents of a PL/SQL table? Call the PLVtab.display procedure. Need to log activity to the database or maybe even write your information to a PL/SQL table? Call the PLVlog.put_line program. By using PL/Vision, you write much less code yourself, and instead spend your time deciding which prebuilt components of PL/Vision to plug into your own applications. You are able to focus much more of your effort on implementing the business rules for your systems.

  • Decrease the number of bugs in your code and fix the bugs you do find more rapidly. Since you will be writing less code, you will minimize the opportunities for bugs to creep into your own programs. When you do have compile errors, you ...

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