Set "serveroutput on" for the current session.

Question

I'm still new to PL/SQL and I use "*SET SERVEROUTPUT ON SIZE 100000"* always before I run a PL program block to get dbms_output. I really need to know why should we specify a size in this line & what that size will be applied for. Also I need to know whether there is any possibility to set serveroutput enabled for the current session, rather than running this code line before each and every PL block.
I Tried *"ALTER SESSION SET SERVEROUTPUT ON SIZE 1000000"* ; But it was not successfully executed.
Thanks!

Answer 1

michaels2 wrote:
I will have to always write it above my PL block, and run this line with that PL block.before the first dbms_output call you can also issue dbms_output.enable() :
declare
my_var varchar(30);
begin
my_var:='&input';
dbms_output.enable();
for i in 1..5 loop
dbms_output.put_line('Hello '||my_var);
end loop;
end;
/This should always work, irrespective of how you SET SERVEROUT in sql*plus.Nope.
SQL> ed
Wrote file afiedt.buf
  1  begin
  2    dbms_output.enable();
  3    dbms_output.put_line('TEST');
  4* end;
SQL> /
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL>dbms_output.enable is used to enable the output buffer (or set the size of it) on the server side of things. It can't influence the client application into retrieving and displaying the output from the buffer, even if that is SQL*Plus. ;)