Question

I’m writing a function which will eventually use one of several possible cursors, for simplicity sake I’ll use two here. In the body of the function I want to be able to use a single variable to describe whichever cursor gets used. Do I use a reference cursor for this or something else?

In the example below, I want the FOR LOOP to use either C1 or C2 depending on the value of myChar. So instead of putting an IF (or CASE statement) around the entire FOR LOOP, I want to make what is currently C1 a variable. Is this doable?

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION MY_FUNCTION (myChar IN CHAR) RETURN INTEGER AS

CURSOR C1 IS SELECT FIRST_NAME FROM EMPLOYEES;

CURSO C2 IS SELECT LAST_NAMES FROM EMPLOYEES;

BEGIN

FOR X IN C1 LOOP — DO STUFF END LOOP; RETURN 1;

END MY_FUNCION;

Answer 1

Yes, I didn’t test this, but it might work:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION MY_FUNCTION (myChar IN CHAR) RETURN INTEGER AS   type r_cursor is REF CURSOR;   c1 r_cursor; begin   IF myChar = '1' THEN       open c1 for SELECT FIRST_NAME FROM EMPLOYEES;   ELSE        open c1 for SELECT LAST_NAMES FROM EMPLOYEES;   END IF;    loop       fetch c1 into c1recs;        -- DO STUFF        exit when c1%notfound;   end loop;   close c1;    RETURN 1; end;