Hi all,

I have some questions about PL/SQL and how Oracle is configured.

Background:

We have a scanning application developed externally which is written in PL/SQL and interfaces with wireless barcode scanners. The scanning system writes to a log file and interacts with the databases procedures and packages. I'm not real familiar with how it all works and I'm trying to figure it out. I am somewhat knowledgeable about Oracle and PL/SQL, and I can read the code and understand 90% of it, but some things elude me.

First of all where does dbms_output.put_line normally print to and how do you change where it prints to? OR how do I find out where it is printing to? There isn't any command window open so it certainly isn't printing there.

Next, IN and OUT are specified in the package bodies and functions. How do you know where IN comes from and where OUT goes? I know that things are coming IN from the scanners and OUT to the scanners, but I can't tell if they are being written to a file first and then picked up by the database or what.

Basically I have to learn how this all works together and make some changes since the company who developed it for us wants tens of thousands of dollars to fix the bugs. Apparently someone in our organization signed off on it saying that it was all good and after using it for some time we have discovered a lot of bugs (literally programming mistakes not enhancements) that need fixing and so I have to do it myself. I'm a so-so programmer whose job is really sysadmin. I know perl and SQL well and can read Java and PL/SQL pretty well, but don't know either well enough to write fluently. Anyway, any insight you can provide would help me out a lot. If you know of any good resources like tutorials or learning sites, please let me know.

Thanks!