Why doesn't Oracle tell you WHICH table or view does not exist?

Question

If you\'ve used Oracle, you\'ve probably gotten the helpful message \"ORA-00942: Table or view does not exist\". Is there a legitimate technical reason the message doesn\'t incl

Answer 1

Reason 1: Multi-lingual interface

There is a language-specific message configuration file for your database instance. Messages are pulled out of there and translated from the pure numeric version to the numeric+text version.

It was probably considered better to have the hardcoded strings, than to run the risk at runtime of having a mysterious failure due to an improperly formatted "%s" string.

(Not that I particularly agree with this POV, btw.)

Reason 2: Security

Right now you don't particularly expose the internal workings of your application if you print a PHP, etc, dump of an Oracle error message to the browser.

Applications would be a bit more exposed if more detail were printed by default... For example, if citibank printed a more explanatory message.

(see disclaimer above, I would be happy to get more information in the error as well.)