Accepting userinput in stored procedure

Question

Hi
I'm writing a stored procedure which will prompt the user to enter his username as
saying 'Please enter your User ID' . I've written the procedure as
create or replace
PROCEDURE Proc_AddUser AS
ACCEPT username CHAR PROMPT 'PLEASE ENTER YOUR FIRST NAME: ' ;
BEGIN
username := '&username';
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(username);
END Proc_AddUser;
It gives the following error during compilation
Error(3,17): PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "CHAR" when expecting one of the following: := . ( @ % ; not null range default character
I also tried something like this
create or replace
PROCEDURE Proc_AddUser AS
username varchar2(20);
BEGIN
username := '&username';
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(username);
END Proc_AddUser;
But when I run it it says something like this in the running log
Connecting to the database RigManagementDatabase.
&username
Process exited.
Disconnecting from the database RigManagementDatabase.
Warm Regards,
Rahul Guha Ray

Answer 1

Stored procedures, by definition reside in the DB server. And they know nothing about screen, keyboard or mouse, that are commonly used to enter data and that are managed by client applications - one of them being SQL*Plus which does have some rudimentary facilities for client imput (meaning in comparison with forms-driven applications built using some development environment).
Stored procs can communicate at runtime through files - using utl_file package, alerts - using dbms_alert package and pipes - using dbms_pipe package. Maybe you wish to read some documentation on these Oracle supplied packages. That means that some process (at OS level) will write to a file, or will be connected to the DB and signal an alert or write to a pipe, and the stored proc running will handle the data from that source.