The site profile is made up of the commands contained in glogin.sql, which is the global login file, and is automatically executed every time a user runs SQL*Plus on a given computer system. The location of glogin.sql varies from one operating system to the next, but it is always below the directory containing the SQL*Plus product. On a default Windows 95 installation of Oracle8, glogin.sql may be found in the following directory:

C:ORAWIN95PLUS80

On a typical Unix system, such as the HP-9000, the glogin.sql file will be found in this directory:

$ORACLE_HOME/sqlplus/admin

The specific version of SQL*Plus you are running makes a difference as well. If you have multiple versions of SQL*Plus installed, the default installation procedures will result in your having a separate glogin.sql file for each. For example, a Windows 95 PC running both SQL*Plus 8.0 and SQL*Plus 3.3 will have a glogin.sql file in each of the following two directories:

C:ORAWIN95PLUS80
C:ORAWIN95PLUS33

The specific file that is executed will depend on which version of SQL*Plus you are running.

The default glogin.sql file, supplied by Oracle for version 8.0 of SQL*Plus, looks like this:

--
--  $Header: /plus/v4/spam/precious/files/ACTIVE/glogin.sql,
--  v 1.1 1995/12/19 02:55:18 cjones Exp $
--  Copyright (c) Oracle Corporation 1988, 1994, 1995.  All Rights Reserved.
--
--  SQL*Plus Global Login startup file.
--
--  This is the global login file for SQL*Plus.
--  Add any sqlplus commands here that are to be
--  executed when a user invokes sqlplus

-- Used by Trusted Oracle
column ROWLABEL format A15

-- Used for the SHOW ERRORS command
column LINE/COL format A8
column ERROR    format A65  WORD_WRAPPED

-- For backward compatibility
set pagesize 14

-- Defaults for SET AUTOTRACE EXPLAIN report
column id_plus_exp format 990 heading i
column parent_id_plus_exp format 990 heading p
column plan_plus_exp format a60 
column object_node_plus_exp format a8
column other_tag_plus_exp format a29
column other_plus_exp format a44

Most of the commands in the default glogin.sql file are COLUMN commands that format the output from the SQL*Plus autotrace facility and from the SHOW ERRORS command. It is interesting to note that the pagesize has been set to 14 for compatibility purposes. In Oracle 7.1 and earlier, the default pagesize was 14. In newer versions of Oracle, the pagesize is 24. In order to prevent problems with scripts that were written with the old default in mind, this glogin.sql file sets the pagesize to the old value.

The user profile is similar to the site profile, except that it is intended to be user-specific. The command file name is login.sql, and it is executed immediately after the glogin.sql file. SQL*Plus searches for the login.sql file in the current directory first; then it searches the directories listed in the SQLPATH environment variable. In a Unix installation, there will not be a default login.sql file, nor will there be a default SQLPATH variable. Under the various Windows environments, you will most likely have a default login.sql file in one of the following directories:

C:ORAWIN95DBS				--Windows 95
C:ORANTDBS				--Windows NT
C:ORAWINDBS				--Windows 3.1, 3.11

You can add to the login.sql file, putting in whatever commands make your life easier. If you are running under Unix, you should make certain that your SQLPATH environment variable points to the directory containing your login.sql; otherwise, SQL*Plus won’t be able to find it when you are working in another directory.