Declaring a Cursor Variable v13

SPL supports the declaration of a cursor variable using both the SYS_REFCURSOR built-in data type as well as creating a type of REF CURSOR and then declaring a variable of that type. SYS_REFCURSOR is a REF CURSOR type that allows any result set to be associated with it. This is known as a weakly-typed REF CURSOR.

Only the declaration of SYS_REFCURSOR and user-defined REF CURSOR variables are different. The remaining usage like opening the cursor, selecting into the cursor and closing the cursor is the same across both the cursor types. For the rest of this chapter our examples will primarily be making use of the SYS_REFCURSOR cursors. All you need to change in the examples to make them work for user defined REF CURSORs is the declaration section.