SQL*Plus is an effective reporting tool. You can count on having SQL*Plus available in any Oracle environment, and it gets the job done well with a minimum of fuss. SQL*Plus was originally a plain-text reporting tool, but HTML support was added in Oracle8 i Database Release 2. This HTML support makes SQL*Plus a handy tool for generating web reports for corporate Intranets, and I describe that support next in Chapter 6.
i SQL*Plus is good for ad hoc query execution but not so good for polished report generation because you can't spool i SQL*Plus output to a file for later printing.