Chapter 12. SQL*Plus
SQL*Plus is the command-line interface to the Oracle database and is probably the most frequently used Oracle utility. This utility allows you to enter SQL statements and PL/SQL code and execute script files. Although some of its functionality is also offered by other products, such as Recovery Manager, Enterprise Manager, and the various Oracle reporting tools, the longevity and wide-ranging capabilities of SQL*Plus keep it in most Oracle practitioners’ toolkits.
SQL*Plus is also one of the oldest of the Oracle utilities. It actually started life as the User Friendly Interface (UFI), the command-line interface for IBM’s System R, one of the first relational database systems. In the 1980s, Oracle started adding features to UFI and soon renamed it AUFI (for Advanced User Friendly Interface). When Oracle 5.0 was released in 1985, the name of the product was changed to SQL*Plus. With each new release of Oracle, new commands and options have been added to this venerable product, but the core of SQL*Plus is still fundamentally the same.
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