Get the name of the calling procedure or function in Oracle PL/SQL

Question

Does anyone know whether it's possible for a PL/SQL procedure (an error-logging one in this case) to get the name of the function/procedure which called it?

Obviously I could pass the name in as a parameter, but it'd be nice to make a system call or something to get the info - it could just return null or something if it wasn't called from a procedure/function.

If there's no method for this that's fine - just curious if it's possible (searches yield nothing).

Skycap

@APC Thanks to you both for your suggestions. I've looked into the who_called_me proc in the OWA_Util package, and the format_call_stack function. I'll definitely use the who_called_me proc. Some searching on that showed that there are potential (but not foolproof) ways of getting the actual function/proc name. (see here: link/httpasktomoraclecomtkytewhocalledme.html). I may well add the call stack in too, depending on how 'deep' this application gets! Regards, Paul – Skycap

PS - if anyone could tell me how to format my previous comment I'd be grateful, tried a few times with reference to the 'markdown' guide, but can't get linebreaks to show! – Skycap

Answer 1

There is a package called OWA_UTIL (which is not installed by default in older versions of the database). This has a method WHO_CALLED_ME() which returns the OWNER, OBJECT_NAME, LINE_NO and CALLER_TYPE. Note that if the caller is a packaged procedure it will return the PACKAGE name not the procedure name. In this case there is no way of getting the procedure name; this is because the procedure name can be overloaded, so it's not necessarily very useful.

Find out more.

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Since 10gR2 there is also the $$PLSQL_UNIT special function; this will also return the OBJECT NAME (i.e. package not packaged procedure).

Prem

Answer 2

I found this forum: http://www.orafaq.com/forum/t/60583/0/. It may be what you are looking.

Basically, you can use the Oracle supplied dbms_utility.format_call_stack:

scott@ORA92> CREATE TABLE error_tab
  2    (who_am_i      VARCHAR2(61),
  3     who_called_me VARCHAR2(61),
  4     call_stack    CLOB)
  5  /

Table created.

scott@ORA92> 
scott@ORA92> CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE d
  2  AS
  3    v_num      NUMBER;
  4    v_owner    VARCHAR2(30);
  5    v_name     VARCHAR2(30);
  6    v_line     NUMBER;
  7    v_caller_t VARCHAR2(100);
  8  BEGIN
  9    select to_number('a') into v_num from dual; -- cause error for testing
 10  EXCEPTION
 11    WHEN OTHERS THEN
 12      who_called_me (v_owner, v_name, v_line, v_caller_t);
 13      INSERT INTO error_tab
 14      VALUES (who_am_i,
 15          v_owner || '.' || v_name,
 16          dbms_utility.format_call_stack);
 17  END d;
 18  /

Procedure created.

scott@ORA92> SHOW ERRORS
No errors.
scott@ORA92> CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE c
  2  AS
  3  BEGIN
  4    d;
  5  END c;
  6  /

Procedure created.

scott@ORA92> CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE b
  2  AS
  3  BEGIN
  4    c;
  5  END b;
  6  /

Procedure created.

scott@ORA92> CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE a
  2  AS
  3  BEGIN
  4    b;
  5  END a;
  6  /

Procedure created.

scott@ORA92> execute a

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

scott@ORA92> COLUMN who_am_i FORMAT A13
scott@ORA92> COLUMN who_called_me FORMAT A13
scott@ORA92> COLUMN call_stack    FORMAT A45
scott@ORA92> SELECT * FROM error_tab
  2  /

WHO_AM_I      WHO_CALLED_ME CALL_STACK
------------- ------------- ---------------------------------------------
SCOTT.D       SCOTT.C       ----- PL/SQL Call Stack -----
                              object      line  object
                              handle    number  name
                            6623F488         1  anonymous block
                            66292138        13  procedure SCOTT.D
                            66299430         4  procedure SCOTT.C
                            6623D2F8         4  procedure SCOTT.B
                            6624F994         4  procedure SCOTT.A
                            66299984         1  anonymous block


scott@ORA92>

Perceive

Answer 3

Basically, all you need to do is to define vars and pass them in a call to a utility method to fill them up with values:

create or replace procedure some_test_proc (p_some_int int) 
is
    owner_name VARCHAR2 (100);
    caller_name VARCHAR2 (100);
    line_number NUMBER;
    caller_type VARCHAR2 (100);
begin
    ....
    OWA_UTIL.WHO_CALLED_ME (owner_name,caller_name,line_number,caller_type);
    -- now you can insert those values along with systimestamp into a log file
    ....
end;

Sufficiency