I answered a question on a DBA Forum today and I thought it was a common enough question to warrant a blog posting.
Question: I am new to the wonderful world of Oracle. I want to be able to view the results of a stored procedure in an output window, say out of Oracle SQL developer. Unfortunately it appears I need to write some more code to actually view the data.
…
On a more generic note, can anyone explain to me why Oracle has chosen to make PL/SQL inordinately more complicated than say MS SQL/Servers tSQL? I mean in tSQL I would just write:
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE TESTSPROC2
AS
select * from test_table order by id_no;
GO
and viola, a nice result set spits out in Query Analyzer (or a .net application).
Answer:
Before I go on, let me say I agree that PL/SQL is more powerful. That being said, here are your options.
1. Test it with REFCURSOR using a FUNCTION and selecting from dual:
SQL> create or replace function testfunc return sys_refcursor 2 as 3 c_test sys_refcursor; 4 begin 5 open c_test for select first_name, last_name, email from employees where rownum < 10; 6 return c_test; 7 end; 8 / Function created. SQL> select testfunc() from dual; TESTFUNC() -------------------- CURSOR STATEMENT : 1 CURSOR STATEMENT : 1 FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME EMAIL -------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- Steven King SKING Neena Kochhar NKOCHHAR Lex De Haan LDEHAAN Alexander Hunold AHUNOLD Bruce Ernst BERNST David Austin DAUSTIN Valli Pataballa VPATABAL Diana Lorentz DLORENTZ Nancy Greenberg NGREENBE 9 rows selected.
2. Use the same function and return it into a variable:
SQL> variable rc refcursor SQL> exec :rc := testfunc() PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. SQL> print rc FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME EMAIL -------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- Steven King SKING Neena Kochhar NKOCHHAR Lex De Haan LDEHAAN Alexander Hunold AHUNOLD Bruce Ernst BERNST David Austin DAUSTIN Valli Pataballa VPATABAL Diana Lorentz DLORENTZ Nancy Greenberg NGREENBE 9 rows selected.
3. Use your procedure with a variable:
SQL> create or replace procedure testproc(c_test out sys_refcursor) is 2 begin 3 open c_test for select first_name, last_name, email from employees where rownum < 10; 4 end; 5 / Procedure created. SQL> variable rc2 refcursor SQL> exec testproc(:rc2); PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. SQL> print rc2 FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME EMAIL -------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- Steven King SKING Neena Kochhar NKOCHHAR Lex De Haan LDEHAAN Alexander Hunold AHUNOLD Bruce Ernst BERNST David Austin DAUSTIN Valli Pataballa VPATABAL Diana Lorentz DLORENTZ Nancy Greenberg NGREENBE 9 rows selected.
#3 is more in-line with your original needs. Personally I’m a fan of #1 and #2 because of the capabilities of returning a refcursor as a function, like passing it into DBMS_XMLGEN.GETXML.
Hey steve, thanks for the link you provided in DBA forums to this place. looks interesting! well i want to run a query several times with different inputs and store all outputs into a cursor/ record set and return to front end.
I don’t clearly know how to implement this from the front end, planning to test with a sample today .
Please can you comment if you have any ideas in this ?
Hello Steve,
if I need just a select statement, do you think I still should prefer using out sys_refcursor in a Stored Porcedure for performance, or Should I prefer a View instead of a Procedure.
which one could be faster.
My Select statement does not have a variable parameter, I mean if I write a procedure there will be no input parameters. There are just some constants for some criteria.
Hi Steven,
the above workaround given by you is really help full.
I want to do some error handling like say NO-DATA-FOUND in the procedure.
Could you please advise how should I proceed for?
Hi ,
Can anybody help me
why I am getting the bellow error while I am trying to use Bulk Collect functionality in my code
1 11 3 Execution ORA-06550: line 11, column 3:
PL/SQL: ORA-00947: not enough values
ORA-06550: line 7, column 3:
PL/SQL: SQL Statement ignored
my code
Create or replace TYPE TESTTYPE AS OBJECT (
POLID varchar2(20),
INCEPTDATE Date,
SUBID number(10));
—————————————————
create or replace type emptype is table of TESTTYPE
————————————————–
Declare
vout emptype;
Begin
select policyno,
policy_inception_date,
submission_id
bulk collect into vout
from mi_policy,mi_submission
where policyno = policy_no
and rownum<1000;
for i in vout.first..vout.last
loop
dbms_output.put_line(vout(i).polid);
end loop;
END ;
Hi i have question. How do i copy a table from one table to another created table of the same type using stored procedure without using cursor?
Hi Steve, I read the orginal thread before finding your blog post and while you give a great answer to the problem, you don’t really answer the question as it relates to Oracle SQL developer. Yes, it’s straight-forward in SQL*Plus and even more simple in Toad but comparatively speaking Oracle SQL developer forces you through hoops…. well, that’s my opinion right now because I am new to SQL Developer and getting used to it. My searches online seem to suggest that the answer to “How do I test a stored procedure that returns a ref cursor using Oracle SQL Developer?” is – Don’t. I would be very happy to be proved wrong.
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE SCOTT.insert_test(i_acctperiod IN VARCHAR2 := NULL,
o_cursor out sys_refcursor )
IS
BEGIN
DECLARE
v_shorttermcutoffdatestr VARCHAR(20);
l_query varchar2(1000);
BEGIN
delete from test;
commit;
SELECT TO_CHAR(add_months(E.HIREDATE,12),’MM/DD/YYYY’) into v_shorttermcutoffdatestr FROM EMP1 E WHERE
TO_CHAR(E.HIREDATE,’Mon YYYY’) = i_acctperiod;
l_query :=’ INSERT INTO TEST
select ename,empno from emp1
where hiredate variable rc2 refcursor
SQL> exec insert_test(‘Dec 1980’,:rc2);
The function compiles but I get this error when i try to execute it:
identifier ‘testfunc’ must be declared.
This code is so far useless.
Susan, did you create it as a function (like #1 and #2) or a procedure (like #3)? Can you post your creation and execution along with the error? Perhaps if I can see what you did it won’t be so useless.
Same issue here. I am using #3 however as I will eventually have multiple recordsets returned from a single stored procedure. I am also calling from Java like below:
String sql = “{ call schema.procedure(?, ?) }”;
stmt = connPrepareCall(sql);
stmt.setInt(1, sectionId);
stmt.registerOutParameter(2, OracleTypes.CURSOR);
stmt.execute();
rs = (ResultSet) stmt.getObject(2);
… etc …
Any help would appreciated
Looks like this post is dead but I will ask anyway:
I have a proc which takes 2 parameters and returns ref_cursor, I need to create a function which will call that proc (function will take the same 2 parameters as the SP and return a data set. How do I go about doing something like that?