Question

I have a procedure that performs some calculations on all records returned by a cursor. It looks a bit like this:

PROCEDURE do_calc(id table.id_column%TYPE)
IS
  CURSOR c IS
    SELECT col1, col2, col3
      FROM table
     WHERE ...;
BEGIN
  FOR r IN c LOOP
    -- do some complicated calculations using r.col1, r.col2, r.col3 etc.
  END LOOP;
END;

Now I have the case where I need to perform the exact same calculation on a different set of records that come from a different table. However, these have the same “shape” as in the above in example.

Is it possible to write a procedure that looks like this:

PROCEDURE do_calc2(c some_cursor_type)
IS
BEGIN
  FOR r IN c LOOP
    -- do the calc, knowing we have r.col1, r.col2, r.col3, etc.
  END LOOP;
END;

I know about SYS_REFCURSOR, but I was wondering if it was possible to use the much more convenient FOR ... LOOP syntax and implicit record type.

Answer 1

Create a package.

Declare your cursor as package variable.

Use %rowtype to set function parameter type.

create or replace package test is
  cursor c is select 1 as one, 2 as two from dual;

  procedure test1;
  function test2(test_record c%ROWTYPE) return number;

end test;


create or replace package body test is
  procedure test1 is    
  begin
    for r in c loop      
      dbms_output.put_line(test2(r));
    end loop;
  end;

  function test2(test_record c%ROWTYPE) return number is
    l_summ number;
  begin
    l_summ := test_record.one + test_record.two;
    return l_summ;
  end;
end test;