pldoc: Utility for generating PL/SQL code documentation

Last updated: $Date: 2006/01/20 18:46:18 $

What is pldoc

pldoc is an open-source utility for generating HTML documentation of code written in Oracle PL/SQL.
The goal is to provide a tool analogous to javadoc for Java.
To get quick idea what the tool does, look at the following example.

Example

Suppose you have PL/SQL code:

sample1.sql
sample2.sql
sample3.sql

And maybe a short description file:

overview.html

You then run pldoc using command like this:

$ pldoc -d sampleOutput -doctitle TheBigApp -overview overview.html sample*.sql

pldoc version: 0.6.8
Parsing file sample1.sql ...
Parsing file sample2.sql ...
Parsing file sample3.sql ...
Generating HTML files ...
Generating summary.html ...
Generating allpackages.html ...
Generating index.html ...
Generating <unit>.html ...
Done (6.366 seconds).

This HTML will be created in the directory you specified (sampleOutput):

Notes

Although pldoc can process code without any comments and can handle some usual /**/ and -- comments, you will get the best result if you use formal comments (/** ...*/) in your PL/SQL code.

pldoc follows javadoc conventions for writing comments etc as close as possible, as those conventions has become de-facto standard for many other similar tools (and no other standards actually exist).

pldoc is written entirely in java and is platform-independent.

Presently, pldoc has only command line interface, no GUI.

The software is still beta, although many people (including the author) are successfully using it in real projects.

Downloads and more info

More documentation can be found here (related to the latest nightly build of pldoc).

For downloads and detailed info, please proceed to the SourceForge project page.

You can also download the most recent nightly builds of pldoc.

Maven plugin for pldoc is available.