In the management of Oracle RDBMS, we frequently have the need to develop shell scripts to manage our databases. This article demonstrates the use of BASH shell script to connect to an Oracle database and execute PL/SQL and SQL statements from within the Oracle database. The following procedure will work on UNIX and LINUX machines.

1. Logon to your Oracle database server as the Oracle software owner.

2. Use vi to create a new file with the name sql_shell_test.sh

mylinux:> vi sql_shell_test.sh
“sql_shell_test.sh” [New file]

~
~

3. Press the ‘a’ key once (for append operations) and past the following text into your file.

sqlplus ‘/ as sysdba’ <

4. Press the keys : –> w –> q and hit the return key to save and exit vi.

5. Execute the chmod command to change you file status to read_write_execute for owner and group

mylinux:> chmod 770 sql_shell_test.sh
mylinux:>

6. As the Oracle software owner, execute the shell script sql_shell_test.sh with the following command.

mylinux:>./sql_shell_test.sh

7. Perform an ls command and you can see that the script has generated the output file test_shell_script_output.lst.

mylinux:>ls -lrt
-rwxrwxrwx 1 oracle dba 148 May 13 03:30 sql_shell_test.sql
-rw-r–r– 1 oracle dba 1391 May 13 03:32 test_shell_script_output.lst
mylinux:>

8. Perform a cat command to see the output of file test_shell_script_output.lst.

mylinux:>cat test_shell_script_output.lst
SQL> select * from v$instance;

INSTANCE_NUMBER INSTANCE_NAME
————— —————-
HOST_NAME
—————————————————————-
VERSION STARTUP_T STATUS PAR THREAD# ARCHIVE LOG_SWITCH_WAIT
—————– ——— ———— — ———- ——- —————
LOGINS SHU DATABASE_STATUS INSTANCE_ROLE ACTIVE_ST BLO
———- — —————– —————— ——— —
1 orcl
frankie
10.2.0.4.0 13-MAY-10 OPEN NO 1 STOPPED
ALLOWED NO ACTIVE PRIMARY_INSTANCE NORMAL NO

SQL> select name, open_mode from v$database;

NAME OPEN_MODE
——— ———-
ORCL READ WRITE

SQL> spool off
mylinux:>

This concludes the execution of Oracle SQL commands from within UNIX or LINUX shell scripts.

Larry J. Catt, OCP 9i, 10g
oracle@allcompute.com
www.allcompute.com