In an Oracle database, to extract object metadata, we can use the DBMS_METADATA package. It provides many useful procedures and functions, such as GET_DDL, GET_DEPENDENT_DDL, and SET_TRANSFORM_PARAM. Additionally, some tools, like SQLcl, provide their own methods for extracting metadata—for example, the DDL command.
Starting with version 23.7, Oracle introduced another method to extract object metadata. In this version, we can use DBMS_DEVELOPER alongside DBMS_METADATA. DBMS_DEVELOPER is user-friendly, and generates output in JSON format.
The DBMS_DEVELOPER package currently supports only TABLE, INDEX, and VIEW, while DBMS_METADATA is much more powerful and supports nearly all object types.
DBMS_DEVELOPER has only one function, called GET_METADATA: