Generating outputfile on client machine.

Question

Hi.
We all use various development tools such sqlplus, pl/sql developer, toad etc...
some time (most of the time) user comes with adhoc requirement.
so we write some code, (which we only know) and get the output.
so we 'spool' and dbms_output to write line.
dbms_output has buffer restriction.
is there any package which will write to client machine directly. (utl_file writes on db server, so it is not useful. text_io/client_text_io work inside forms)
regards

Answer 1

Simple answer no. How can server-side code (like PL/SQL) hack its way across a network into some unknown client platform (could be Windows, Linux, OS/X, etc), and break into that client platform's file system to write data to it?
More complex answer. Quite easy within the proper concepts of client-server. Top of the list is having the client use a browser to "access" the data - and the developers writing PL/SQL procedure that, instead of using DBMS_OUTPUT, uses the HTP package instead. In this case the PL/SQL code "writes"to a HTML buffer (page). This buffer is then rendered by the user's browser.
The components underneath this is Apache and MOD_PLSQL (Oracle's HTTP Application Server), or DBMS_EPG.
Even easier is using APEX - Oracle's Application Express.