Question

I would like to do something like this

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION return_cursor RETURN SYS_REFCURSOR IS
        CURSOR theCursor IS
            SELECT 1
            FROM dual;
        myCursor SYS_REFCURSOR;

    BEGIN
        OPEN myCursor for theCursor;
        RETURN myCursor;
END return_cursor;

Is there a way to do this?, the reason I want this is because I have some cursor defined at a global scope in a package, and wouldn’t like to re-write them for the call of a function.

I know, i could just delete the global cursor and always use the function, but I still want to know if this is possible. Thanks.

Answer 1

a pl/sql cursor and refcursor are not interchangable, so no you cannot do what you want directly like that.

one option would be to use a view instead, i.e.

create view theCursor as select 1 from dual;

then in your package just select from the view wherever the cursor was used. i.e. instead of

for r_row in theCursor

write

for r_row in (select * from theCursor)

and for the refcursor

open myCursor for select * from refCursor;

that way you don’t have to rewrite the view SQL for this one case.