About the debugging process About the PLSQL Interpreter About the Source pane

Advanced Concepts 2-83

2.9.4 About the Oracle Call Interface OCI

In releases prior to Oracle Reports 10g, the Oracle Call Interface OCI provided a set of standard procedures that you could call in your 3GL programs to call Oracle Reports components. These procedures written in C were shipped with the Oracle Reports Builder, Reports Runtime, and Reports Converter components. For example, to run a Oracle Reports Builder report from a ProFORTRAN program, you could add a RWCRRB procedure call to your program to run the report using the Reports Runtime component. Beginning with Oracle Reports 10g, the OCI is obsolete. Instead, use the rwclient.exe command line interface or the JSP tag library.

2.10 Debugging Tools

The topics in this section discuss debugging reports in Oracle Reports Builder. ■ About the debugging process ■ About the PLSQL Interpreter ■ About the Source pane ■ About debug commands in the PLSQL Interpreter ■ About debug actions ■ About the current execution location ■ About the current scope location ■ About debug levels ■ About modifying code at runtime

2.10.1 About the debugging process

Debugging an application is an iterative process in which application errors are identified and corrected. In general, quickly identifying and locating failing code is essential to successfully debugging your application. See also Section 4.14.1, Debugging a report Section 4.14.2, Running a report in debug mode

2.10.2 About the PLSQL Interpreter

The PLSQL Interpreter is your debugging workspace, where you can display source code, create debug actions, run program units, and execute Interpreter commands, PLSQL, and SQL statements. By default, two panes are always open in the PLSQL Interpreter: Source pane and Interpreter pane. Debugging features include the following: ■ Direct manipulation debugging : insert debug actions and inspect program data by directly manipulating displayed source text. ■ Dynamic execution feedback : Oracle Reports Builder automatically displays and tracks the current PLSQL source location as program execution is interrupted by debug actions or incrementally advanced during program stepping. 2-84 Oracle Reports Users Guide to Building Reports ■ Browsing of interrupted program state : once execution has been interrupted, it is possible to browse the current stack, browse and modify variable state, and execute arbitrary PLSQL statements. All information is accessed symbolically that is, by name as opposed to by address or number.

2.10.3 About the Source pane

The PLSQL Interpreters Source pane displays a read-only copy of the program unit currently selected in the Object Navigator pane. The numbers along the left hand margin correspond to the line numbers of the displayed program unit. In addition, the symbols described below may appear in the margin.

2.10.4 About debug commands in the PLSQL Interpreter