Question

I am working with PL/SQL. I am sending some parameters to my procedure. One of these parameters should be a column name. Initially it’s a varchar2, but I want to use this in my cursor to reference a column name. How is this possible?

This is what my code looks something like:

    PROCEDURE proc_name( x IN VARCHAR2, y IN VARCHAR2 ) IS

      cursor csr IS 
       SELECT * 
       FROM table
       SORT BY x y


     BEGIN 
      for y in csr loop 
        ------
      end loop; 

     END proc_name;

I’ve tried to research this for the last couple of days with no luck. I looked into dynamic SQL, is this the right direction? Doesn’t seem to be working for me.

Thanks in advance for any help

Answer 1

Try this:

PROCEDURE proc_name( x IN VARCHAR2, y IN VARCHAR2 ) IS

  rc sys_refcursor;

  r_table table%rowtype;

 BEGIN 
  open rc for
   'SELECT * 
    FROM table
    ORDER BY ' || x || ' ' || y;
  loop
    fetch rc into r_table;
    exit when rc%notfound;
    ------
  end loop; 
  close rc;

 END proc_name;