How to Create a Visual Expert Project with Oracle PL/SQL Code

This tutorial describes how to create an Oracle project with PL/SQL code stored in folders or files.

You can also check how to connect and configure the Oracle Database Cloud from Visual Expert to analyze your PL/SQL code.

Step 1 – Add Oracle Code

  • Click ‘New’ on the ribbon menu and select ‘Oracle PL/SQL’ in the next pop-up.
    Select Oracle code to analyze with Visual Expert
  • Select Folders and/or Files
    Source of Oracle source code analysed with Visual Expert
  • Specify the location of your Oracle PL/SQL code by clicking on "Add files".
    Then click on "Finish".
    Add Oracle files to analyze

Step 2 – Select the objects you wish to analyze

Important: If you're connecting to a database, Visual Expert will analyze all the objects accessible from this connection, including all schemas, tables, procedures, system objects, etc.
In this case, it is highly recommended to filter the DB objects you wish to analyze:
DB objects listed by default by Visual Expert

If you click on "More Filters" you get the following options:

Filter the DB objects you wish to analyze with Visual Expert

  • Once your Oracle object selection is completed, click ‘Next’ > then select "Open project setup".
    Open Visual Expert project Setup 
  • Name your Visual Expert project
  • Set the scheduler to refresh your code analysis automatically on a regular basis
  • Select "Launch the analysis"
  • After analysis, you will see Oracle and PL/SQL objects in the treeview
    List of Oracle objects found by Visual Expert
  • You will also see 2 sources of code in your VE project.
    Go to [Code Analysis - Select Source Code].

PowerBuilder and Oracle source code location

Step 3 - Remove Ambiguities and Duplicate tables

Why this step?

Select  firstname,  lastname  from  employee 
Select firstname, lastname from myschema.employee

This basic example may create an ambiguity:
By default, the Visual Expert code parsers cannot know whether employee and myschema.employee refer to the same table. Unless we remove this ambiguity, Visual Expert will duplicate the table employee.

Please read this article to remove possible ambiguities in your project.