How to search for column reference in oracle

Imagine that you need to find out which code update a column in a table. Some developer tools could point out who refers to the table but so far I couldn't find the one that could answer my need.

All_source comes to the rescue, I'd say that it is a special view that holds all the database objects accessible by the user.

Here is the description on the view's columns:

OWNER	VARCHAR2(30)	NOT NULL	Owner of the object
NAME	VARCHAR2(30)	NOT NULL	Name of the object
TYPE	VARCHAR2(12)		Type of object: FUNCTION, JAVA SOURCE, PACKAGE, PACKAGE BODY, PROCEDURE, TRIGGER, TYPE, TYPE BODY
LINE	NUMBER	NOT NULL	Line number of this line of source
TEXT	VARCHAR2(4000)		Text source of the stored object

Example:
I need to find out who refers to column FK_USER.

select * from all_source where text like '%FK_USER%'

And I will get all the places which have reference to FK_USER.

If you would take it further, you could utilize it for searching almost anything (e.g. comments in the code, TODO tag, exception).

... wondering if there're more "magical" view like this.

Retrieving generic's Class type

Quite few times I've been using generic and I needed the Class type. I found out that I've to pass the class type instead of extracting the class type from the type parameter. This story comes to an end when I found out a way to extract the type, thanks to Type interface :)

Here's the recipe:
- First extract the genericSuperclass
- Retrieve the actual type arguments

.. and the code is:
ParameterizedType type = (ParameterizedType) getClass().getGenericSuperclass();
Class classType = (Class) type.getActualTypeArguments()[0];

ParameterizedType represents an invocation of a generic class or interface, better explanation could be read in the javadoc.

That's all... :)