Utl_file.fremove doesn't work unless UTL_FILE_DIR is set (10gR1 on Windows)

Question

Hello,
can someone confirm that the procedure utl_file.fremove does not work and raises ORA-29280 when you try to remove a file from a directory on the server and there is no corresponding UTL_FILE_DIR set?
I created an oracle directory object for the file directory and issued the necessary grant read,write to the user executing the procedure, but fremove returns an error until I put the directory path in UTL_FILE_DIR in the SPFILE.
This seems to conflict with what is stated in the documentation of the package where the user is even encouraged to avoid UTL_FILE_DIR altogether.
What am I missing here?
Bye,
Flavio

Answer 1

Flavioc,
i used one of the already available directories for the test and it seems to work.
and also there is no value set for UTL_FILE_DIR in my database.
SQL> BEGIN
  2    UTL_FILE.FREMOVE('LOG_FILE_DIR','UTL_FILE.XLS');
  3  END;
  4  /
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL> column name format a30
SQL> column value format a30
SQL> select name, value from v$parameter where name like 'utl_file_dir'
  2  /
NAME                           VALUE
utl_file_dir
SQL> select directory_path
  2  from all_directories
  3  where directory_name like 'LOG_FILE_DIR'
  4  /
DIRECTORY_PATH
c:\oracle\product\10.1.0\Db_1\demo\schema\log\But same thing failed when i created a directory object on a path which was outside oracle home.