Undocumented Oracle Functions

Undocumented functions in Oracle are always fun, and you just may find something useful.

The caveat of course is that they are undocumented. They can change without notice between releases or patch levels, so building apps that depend on them may be unwise.

They are often quite useful from a DBA perspective when used in SQL scripts.

Here are a few that I've played with. These are all found in Oracle 10.2.0.3

These functions have one thing in common - they have a prefix of SYS_OP_

Some of these appear to be identical to documented functions.

I don't know of any official explanation regarding the purpose of undocumented functions that seem to mimic documented functions. It could be that the source for the documented functions are separate from those that are documented, ensuring that functionality will not change for an undocumented function that is used in the Oracle kernel, even though its documented doppelganger may change in future releases.

In any case, undocumented functions are always interesting, and here are a few to play with.

Just keep in mind that these are undocumented, and as such may change or disappear entirely in future releases

sys_op_vacand - Return the binary AND of two raw values. Results are in hex

SELECT sys_op_vecand(hextoraw('FF'),hextoraw('FE')) from dual;
FE

16:13:12 SQL>SELECT sys_op_vecand(hextoraw('C3'),hextoraw('7E')) from dual;
42

sys_op_vecor - Return the binary OR of two raw values. Results are in hex

16:14:39 SQL>SELECT sys_op_vecor(hextoraw('FF'),hextoraw('FE')) from dual;
FF

sys_op_vecxor - Return the binary XOR of two raw values. Results are in hex

16:14:39 SQL>SELECT sys_op_vecor(hextoraw('FF'),hextoraw('FE')) from dual;
FF

sys_op_vecbit - Return the value of the bit at position N in a raw value

The return value is 0 or 1

This is an interesting function as it can be used to determine the value of bits in a number. If for instance some flags are stored in a bit vector and you need to know the value of the 3 bit, this is an easy way to do it.

I believe the upper limit on the number of bits is 127.

prompt
define decnum=10
prompt &&decnum dec = 1010 bin

16:16:27 SQL>select 'Bit 0 is ' || sys_op_vecbit(SYS_OP_NUMTORAW(&&decnum),0) from dual;
Bit 0 is 0

16:16:27 SQL>select 'Bit 1 is ' || sys_op_vecbit(SYS_OP_NUMTORAW(&&decnum),1) from dual;
Bit 1 is 1

16:16:27 SQL>select 'Bit 2 is ' || sys_op_vecbit(SYS_OP_NUMTORAW(&&decnum),2) from dual;
Bit 2 is 0

16:16:27 SQL>select 'Bit 3 is ' || sys_op_vecbit(SYS_OP_NUMTORAW(&&decnum),3) from dual;
Bit 3 is 1

sys_op_bitvec - This appears to be for used to build a bit vector, but I haven't figured out
how to use it. Please let me know if you do.

sys_op_map_nonnull - This has been thouroughly discussed on Eddie Awad's blog:
sys_op_map_nonnull discussion

sys_op_descend - Returns value as it would be used in a descending index. This is essentially
reverse() function with output in hex.

16:32:41 SQL>select sys_op_descend('ABC') from dual;
BEBDBCFF

sys_op_undescend - The inverse of sys_op_descend. Well, almost

17:12:59 SQL>select sys_op_undescend(sys_op_descend('ABC')) from dual
17:12:59 2 /

414243

Notice the output is in the original order, but in decimal rather than hex.


sys_op_dump - dump the data from an ADT/UDT (Abtract/User Data Type)

16:54:13 SQL>CREATE OR REPLACE TYPE my_adt AS OBJECT (
16:54:13 2 last_name varchar2(30),
16:54:13 3 first_name varchar2(30),
16:54:13 4 id number(6)
16:54:13 5 )
16:54:13 6 /
16:54:13 SQL>
16:54:13 SQL>
16:54:13 SQL>select sys_op_dump(my_adt('still','jared',234987)) from dual;

('still','jared',234987)

I don't use objects in the database, but this would likely be useful for someone that does.

sys_op_guid - this appears to be identical to sys_guid

17:00:50 SQL>select sys_guid(), sys_op_guid() from dual;

52BA7CF06BB488ECE040010A7C646200 52BA7CF06BB588ECE040010A7C646200