I've been asked by one of my architects whether there is a quick way of see a list of file existing in the random folder on the server. The first response was - NO, because all file system communication should go via DIRECTORY object (starting 10g).
But I recalled that I've read sometimes about a slightly nontrivial usage of undocumented package DBMS_BACKUP_RECOVERY that could serve exactly the required purpose. And in a minute I found the article and the following code sample:
DECLARE
pattern VARCHAR2(1024) := 'C:\temp\*';
ns VARCHAR2(1024);
BEGIN
SYS.DBMS_BACKUP_RESTORE.searchFiles(pattern, ns);
FOR each_file IN (SELECT FNAME_KRBMSFT AS name FROM X$KRBMSFT) LOOP
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(each_file.name);
END LOOP;
END;
Yes, you still need some fairly advanced privileges (like logging as SYS and having 'db_recovery_file_dest' parameter set), but still - I was surprised! Thanks a lot to Christopher Poole that I don't need to reinvent at least this bicycle :-)
P.s. More posts about DBMS_BACKUP_RESTORE are coming ;-) !
