Global variable per schema

Question

Hi,
I want to define a variable per schema to hold a schema display name.
I thought about holding it in a specific table but I think it's wasteful to hold such a segment for that
and an access to the value causes block read.
I also thought about defining a function somthing like that:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION getDisplayName RETURN VARCHAR2 IS
BEGIN
RETURN 'SchemaDisplayName';
END getDisplayName ;
I also thought about session context but I want to avoid initializing it each time I connect to the schema.
Does anybody know what is the efficient way to hold it? Is the function solution is the best approach?
Thanks
dyahav

Answer 1

Hi, Dyahav,
The function you posted does not take any arguments. Do you really want a constant, or do you want something that might return different values for different users? It would help if you posted more details about what you need, and how you see it being used.
If you want a constant, then a function is okay. If the value ever needs to change, the function will have to be changed. Although this may be a trivial change, not everyone is capable of doing it.
If you want to store some information keyed by username, tables were designed just for that sort of thing. I don't understand your objection to using a table. No matter where you store the information, it's going to take up space, and will require a disk read if it's not already in memory.
If the data is stored in a table, authorized users can be allowed to change it.
It's not unusual to have application-specific attributes attached to users. You may have others in the future. If you create a table, you can add more columns to the table to handle the new attributes.