How to know if a db-link is used somewhere in a DB - oracle

Question

I would like to know if it exists an Oracle command to know if a DB-LINK (name: myBDLink) is used somewhere in a DB and how to display the objects (views,materialized views, procedures, functions, ...) which use it.
Could you please help me with that ?
Thanks for your help

Answer 1

Well, you could try to query various system views and see whether any of them contains a string you're looking for. As you want to check the whole database, you'll probably connect as a privileged user and check dba_ views; otherwise, all_ or user_ would do.
For example, to check procedures, functions, packages, ...:
select owner, name, type, line
from dba_source
where owner not in ('SYS', 'SYSTEM')
and lower(text) like '%mydblink%';
To check views, you'll need a function which will search through its LONG datatype column (as you can't use it directly in SQL):
create or replace function f_long(par_view in varchar2, par_String in varchar2)
return varchar2
is
l_text varchar2(32000);
begin
select text
into l_text
from dba_views
where owner not in ('SYS', 'SYSTEM')
and view_name = par_view;
return case when instr(lower(l_text), lower(par_string)) > 0 then 1
else 0
end;
end;
/
and then
select owner, view_name
from dba_views
where f_long(view_name, 'mydblink') = 1;
I excluded SYS and SYSTEM as they should not contain anything of users' stuff. Perhaps you'd want to exclude some more users.
To see some more (re)sources, query the dictionary, e.g.
select table_name, comments
from dictionary;
TABLE_NAME COMMENTS
------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------
USER_CONS_COLUMNS Information about accessible columns in constraint
definitions
ALL_CONS_COLUMNS Information about accessible columns in constraint
definitions
DBA_CONS_COLUMNS Information about accessible columns in constraint
definitions
<snip>

Answer 2

There is no complete answer. How would the database know of code that is outside of the database? It can't. So if you have a sql script, or some application that does not rely on stored procedures to do everything, the database will not know of them.
That said, for dependencies that are in stored procedures in the database, you can try this:
select *
from dba_dependencies
where referenced_link_name is not null
;

Answer 3

To add to the other (correct) answers that have been posted by #Littlefoot and #EdStevens, a quick-and-dirty analysis can also be made against the Automated Workload Repository (AWR).
The benefit of this approach is it will find usages of remote objects from SQL submitted to the database whether that SQL is in DBA_SOURCE or not (e.g., is embedded in an external application).
-- Find any objects referenced across a database link (sort of)
select object_node, object_name, count(distinct sql_id) sql_id_count
from dba_hist_sql_plan
where object_type = 'REMOTE'
group by object_node, object_name
order by object_node, object_name
;
The problem is that AWR data isn't 100% complete. First of all, it's not kept around forever, so a database link last used more than a month (or two months or however long your DBAs keep AWR data for) wouldn't be seen. Second of all, AWR only takes snapshots periodically, say every hour. So it's theoretically possible for a SQL to use a database link and then get aged out of the library cache before the next AWR snapshot.
I think the chance of missing something due to that last bit is small on the systems I work with. But, if you have poorly written applications (i.e., no bind variables) and limited shared pool space, it's something to worry about.