SYS_CONTEXT

Syntax

sys_context::=

Description of the illustration sys_context.gif


Purpose

SYS_CONTEXT returns the value of parameter associated with the context namespace. You can use this function in both SQL and PL/SQL statements.

For namespace and parameter, you can specify either a string or an expression that resolves to a string designating a namespace or an attribute. The context namespace must already have been created, and the associated parameter and its value must also have been set using the DBMS_SESSION.set_context procedure. The namespace must be a valid SQL identifier. The parameter name can be any string. It is not case sensitive, but it cannot exceed 30 bytes in length.

The datatype of the return value is VARCHAR2. The default maximum size of the return value is 256 bytes. You can override this default by specifying the optional length parameter, which must be a NUMBER or a value that can be implicitly converted to NUMBER. The valid range of values is 1 to 4000 bytes. If you specify an invalid value, then Oracle Database ignores it and uses the default.

Oracle provides a built-in namespace called USERENV, which describes the current session. The predefined parameters of namespace USERENV are listed in Table 7-11, along with the lengths of their return strings.

Examples

The following statement returns the name of the user who logged onto the database:

CONNECT OE/OE
SELECT SYS_CONTEXT ('USERENV', 'SESSION_USER') 
   FROM DUAL;

SYS_CONTEXT ('USERENV', 'SESSION_USER')
------------------------------------------------------
OE

The following hypothetical example returns the group number that was set as the value for the attribute group_no in the PL/SQL package that was associated with the context hr_apps when hr_apps was created:

SELECT SYS_CONTEXT ('hr_apps', 'group_no') "User Group" 
   FROM DUAL;