Oracle® PL/SQL® Interactive Workbook, Second Edition

Lab 15.2 Cursor Variables

Lab Objective After this Lab, you will be able to: ✓ Make Use of Cursor Variables

Up to this point in this book you have seen cursors used to gather specific data from a single SELECT statement. In Chapter 14, “Packages,” you learned how to bring a number of procedures into a large program called a package. A package may have one cursor that is used by a few procedures. In this case, each of the procedures that use the same cursor would have to declare, open, fetch, and close the cursor. In the current version of PL/SQL, cursors can be declared and manipulated like any other PL/SQL variable. This type of variable is called a cursor variable or a REF CURSOR. A cursor variable is just a reference or a handle to a static ...