It was so fun: yesterday I wrote  a small article on creating a query on Foreign Keys refering a certain table. A post with content that I made up dozens of times in my Oracle carreer. And right away I got 2 good comments. One was on the blog itself.

And of course Anonymous is absolutely right. So I added 'U' as a constraint type option.

The other comment was from my much appreciated colleague Erik. He brought this to another level, by pointing me out how to add this as a User Defined Extension in SQL Developer.

I must say I was already quite pleased with the Snippets in SQLDeveloper. So I already added the query as a snippet:
But the tip of Erik is much cooler.
He refered to a tip by Sue Harper that explains this (What, it's been in there since 2007?!).

Now what to do? First create an xml file, for instance referred_by_fks.xml,  with the following content:

<items>
    <item type="editor" node="TableNode" vertical="true">
    <title><![CDATA[FK References]]></title>
    <query>
        <sql>
            <![CDATA[select fk.owner,
fk.table_name,
fk.constraint_name,
fk.status
from all_constraints  fk
join all_constraints rpk on rpk.constraint_name = fk.r_constraint_name 
where fk.constraint_type='R'
and rpk.constraint_type in('P','U')
and rpk.table_name = :OBJECT_NAME
and rpk.owner = :OBJECT_OWNER
order by fk.table_name, fk.constraint_name;]]>
        </sql>
    </query>
    </item>
</items>

Note that I updated my query a bit.


Then to add the extension to SQL Developer:

• Open the prefereces via: Tools > Preferences
• Navigate to Database > User Defined Extensions
• Click "Add Row" button
• In Type choose "EDITOR", Location is where you saved the xml file above
• Click "Ok" then restart SQL Developer

Now, if you click on a table in the navigater, you will have an extra tab on your table editor:

Cool stuff! And it's been there for ages!