I just received an email suggesting to look at utplsql for pl/sql unit testing. I actually downloaded utplsql a couple of days ago, but haven’t used it yet. I did see that it requires you to install some packages and tables into your database. I’m currenlty working on a large oracle applications database, not sure if the dba’s will allow me to install all of this in the database. Personally i would prefer some unit test tool which i could use without installing anything. We created some unix shell scripts which use sqlplus to run all the tests. I feel this is good enough for now.
Just to clarify why i think refactoring pl/sql is harder than refactoring java:
refactoring java usually doesn’t impact production data, but when refactoring sql you have to think about migrating data in production, which usually means creating a lot of migration scripts.
there’s no tool support for pl/sql refactoring. For java i mostly use eclipse, which makes refactoring very easy, just select a method, and use a menu option to move it to it’s own class or to a different class. Or select some java lines, and use a menu option to move it into a new method, eclipse will determine all the parameters for you. I would really like to see some of this in pl/sql tools.