SYS_CONTEXT in a Procedure

I can use the following SQL statement to get the OS_USER from Oracle.


select sys_context('USERENV','OS_USER') from dual;

However when I try to use this in a procedure and assign the value into a variable, no value is assigned.

select sys_context('USERENV','OS_USER') into v_osuser from dual;

My procedure fails as instead of assigning the OS_USER to v_osuer... os_user is NULL.

Any ideas on why this isn't working? Is there a limitation on the INTO clause or since this is in a procedure?

Thanks.
-mcslain

Quote:

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Originally posted by mcslain
My procedure fails as instead of assigning the OS_USER to v_osuer... os_user is NULL.

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What do you mean "it fails"? It fails with ORA error? It works just as expected for me, here is a simple example:

Code:

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SQL> select sys_context('USERENV','OS_USER') from dual;

SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','OS_USER')
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Administrator

SQL> create or replace procedure foo
  2  as
  3    dummy varchar2(50);
  4  begin
  5    select sys_context('USERENV','OS_USER') into dummy from dual;
  6    dbms_output.put_line('OS user returned by proc: ' || dummy);
  7  end;
  8  /

Procedure created.

SQL> set serveroutput on
SQL> begin
  2    foo;
  3  end;
  4  /

OS user returned by proc: Administrator

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL>

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yep, your right... it works. thesys_context was returning os_name with domain and username for the machine my server was on (where i wrote the procedure) so i wrote this with substr to grab the username. however, all the machines other than the server were returning only os username... so my substr was killing them off essentially.

anyhow... thanks for helping out. it got me back on the right path.

-mcslain