Oracle PL-SQL : REF CURSOR . dEexams.com

A REF Cursor is a datatype that holds a cursor value in the same way that a VARCHAR2 variable will hold a string value.

A REF Cursor can be opened on the server and passed to the client as a unit rather than fetching one row at a time. One can use a Ref Cursor as target of an assignment, and it can be passed as parameter to other program units. Ref Cursors are opened with an OPEN FOR statement. In most other ways they behave similar to normal cursors.

This feature was introduced with PL/SQL v2.3 (Oracle 7.3).

Create a function that opens a cursor and returns a reference to it:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION func_refcur RETURN SYS_REFCURSOR
AS
  c SYS_REFCURSOR;
BEGIN
  OPEN c FOR select * from dual;
  RETURN c;
END;
/

Call the above function and fetch all rows from the cursor it returns:

set serveroutput on
DECLARE
 c SYS_REFCURSOR;
 v VARCHAR2(1);
BEGIN
 c := func_refcur();   -- Get ref cursor from function
 LOOP 
   FETCH c into v;
   EXIT WHEN c%NOTFOUND;
   dbms_output.put_line('Value from cursor: '||v);
 END LOOP;
END;
/

Ref Cursor is of two types

Strong ref cursor (also called as static structure type) :
When return type included then it is called strong or static structure type.

Static ref cursor supports different type of select statement but all of same structure, but not necessary that the table should be same.
Weak ref cursor (also called as dynamic structure type) :
This ref cursor allows us to any type of select statement irrespective of data structure .i.e any table.

Syntax :

type  is ref cursor [ return  ];

Syntax for open statement :

open  for select statement . . . .;

Uk01 on Feb 17, 2015 at 12:02 am

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