Sqlplus is my second home, part 8: Embedding multiple sqlplus arguments into one variable

I’ve updated some of my ASH scripts to use these 4 arguments in a standard way:

1. What ASH columns to display (and aggregate by)
2. Which ASH rows to use for the report (filter)
3. Time range start
4. Time range end

So this means whenever I run ashtop (or dashtop) for example, I need to type in all 4 parameters. The example below would show top SQL_IDs only for user SOE sessions from last hour of ASH samples:

SQL> @ashtop sql_id username='SOE' sysdate-1/24 sysdate

    Total
  Seconds     AAS %This   SQL_ID        FIRST_SEEN          LAST_SEEN           DIST_SQLEXEC_SEEN
--------- ------- ------- ------------- ------------------- ------------------- -----------------
     2271      .6   21% | 56pwkjspvmg3h 2015-03-29 13:13:16 2015-03-29 13:43:34               145
     2045      .6   19% | gkxxkghxubh1a 2015-03-29 13:13:16 2015-03-29 13:43:14               149
     1224      .3   11% | 29qp10usqkqh0 2015-03-29 13:13:25 2015-03-29 13:43:32               132
      959      .3    9% | c13sma6rkr27c 2015-03-29 13:13:19 2015-03-29 13:43:34               958
      758      .2    7% |               2015-03-29 13:13:16 2015-03-29 13:43:31                 1

When I want more control and specify a fixed time range, I can just use the ANSI TIMESTAMP (or TO_DATE) syntax:

SQL> @ashtop sql_id username='SOE' "TIMESTAMP'2015-03-29 13:00:00'" "TIMESTAMP'2015-03-29 13:15:00'"

    Total
  Seconds     AAS %This   SQL_ID        FIRST_SEEN          LAST_SEEN           DIST_SQLEXEC_SEEN
--------- ------- ------- ------------- ------------------- ------------------- -----------------
      153      .2   22% | 56pwkjspvmg3h 2015-03-29 13:13:29 2015-03-29 13:14:59                 9
      132      .1   19% | gkxxkghxubh1a 2015-03-29 13:13:29 2015-03-29 13:14:59                 8
       95      .1   14% | 29qp10usqkqh0 2015-03-29 13:13:29 2015-03-29 13:14:52                 7
       69      .1   10% | c13sma6rkr27c 2015-03-29 13:13:31 2015-03-29 13:14:58                69
       41      .0    6% |               2015-03-29 13:13:34 2015-03-29 13:14:59                 1

Note that the arguments 3 & 4 above are in double quotes as there’s a space within the timestamp value. Without the double-quotes, sqlplus would think the script has total 6 arguments due to the spaces.

I don’t like to type too much though (every character counts!) so I was happy to see that the following sqlplus hack works. I just defined pairs of arguments as sqlplus DEFINE variables as seen below (also in init.sql now):

-- geeky shorcuts for producing date ranges for various ASH scripts
  define     min="sysdate-1/24/60 sysdate"
  define  minute="sysdate-1/24/60 sysdate"
  define    5min="sysdate-1/24/12 sysdate"
  define    hour="sysdate-1/24 sysdate"
  define   2hours="sysdate-1/12 sysdate"
  define  24hours="sysdate-1 sysdate"
  define      day="sysdate-1 sysdate"
  define    today="TRUNC(sysdate) sysdate"

And now I can type just 3 arguments instead of 4 when I run some of my scripts and want some predefined behavior like seeing last 5 minutes’ activity:

SQL> @ashtop sql_id username='SOE' &5min

    Total
  Seconds     AAS %This   SQL_ID        FIRST_SEEN          LAST_SEEN           DIST_SQLEXEC_SEEN
--------- ------- ------- ------------- ------------------- ------------------- -----------------
      368     1.2   23% | gkxxkghxubh1a 2015-03-29 13:39:34 2015-03-29 13:44:33                37
      241      .8   15% | 56pwkjspvmg3h 2015-03-29 13:40:05 2015-03-29 13:44:33                25
      185      .6   12% | 29qp10usqkqh0 2015-03-29 13:39:40 2015-03-29 13:44:33                24
      129      .4    8% | c13sma6rkr27c 2015-03-29 13:39:35 2015-03-29 13:44:32               129
      107      .4    7% |               2015-03-29 13:39:34 2015-03-29 13:44:33                 1

That’s it, I hope this hack helps :-)

By the way – if you’re a command line & sqlplus fan, check out the SQLCL command line “new sqlplus” tool from the SQL Developer team! (you can download it from the SQL Dev early adopter page for now).