Easy Stored Procedure Output
Tuesday, January 15th, 2008I answered a question on the DBA Forum today and I thought it was a common enough question to warrant a blog posting.
You can find the entire thread here. For my blog, I’ll post a condensed version of the question.
Question: I am new to the wonderful world of Oracle. I want to be able to view the results of a stored procedure in an output window, say out of Oracle SQL developer. Unfortunately it appears I need to write some more code to actually view the data.
…
On a more generic note, can anyone explain to me why Oracle has chosen to make PL/SQL inordinately more complicated than say MS SQL/Servers tSQL? I mean in tSQL I would just write:
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE TESTSPROC2
AS
select * from test_table order by id_no;
GO
and viola, a nice result set spits out in Query Analyzer (or a .net application).
Answer:
Before I go on, let me say I agree that PL/SQL is more powerful (read the original post to see the debate). That being said, here are your options.
1. Test it with REFCURSOR using a FUNCTION and selecting from dual:
SQL> create or replace function testfunc return sys_refcursor
2 as
3 c_test sys_refcursor;
4 begin
5 open c_test for select first_name, last_name, email from employees where rownum < 10;
6 return c_test;
7 end;
8 /
Function created.
SQL> select testfunc() from dual;
TESTFUNC()
--------------------
CURSOR STATEMENT : 1
CURSOR STATEMENT : 1
FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME EMAIL
-------------------- ------------------------- -------------------------
Steven King SKING
Neena Kochhar NKOCHHAR
Lex De Haan LDEHAAN
Alexander Hunold AHUNOLD
Bruce Ernst BERNST
David Austin DAUSTIN
Valli Pataballa VPATABAL
Diana Lorentz DLORENTZ
Nancy Greenberg NGREENBE
9 rows selected.2. Use the same function and return it into a variable:
SQL> variable rc refcursor
SQL> exec :rc := testfunc()
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL> print rc
FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME EMAIL
-------------------- ------------------------- -------------------------
Steven King SKING
Neena Kochhar NKOCHHAR
Lex De Haan LDEHAAN
Alexander Hunold AHUNOLD
Bruce Ernst BERNST
David Austin DAUSTIN
Valli Pataballa VPATABAL
Diana Lorentz DLORENTZ
Nancy Greenberg NGREENBE
9 rows selected.3. Use your procedure with a variable:
SQL> create or replace procedure testproc(c_test out sys_refcursor) is
2 begin
3 open c_test for select first_name, last_name, email from employees where rownum < 10;
4 end;
5 /
Procedure created.
SQL> variable rc2 refcursor
SQL> exec testproc(:rc2);
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL> print rc2
FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME EMAIL
-------------------- ------------------------- -------------------------
Steven King SKING
Neena Kochhar NKOCHHAR
Lex De Haan LDEHAAN
Alexander Hunold AHUNOLD
Bruce Ernst BERNST
David Austin DAUSTIN
Valli Pataballa VPATABAL
Diana Lorentz DLORENTZ
Nancy Greenberg NGREENBE
9 rows selected.#3 is more in-line with your original needs. Personally I’m a fan of #1 and #2 because of the capabilities of returning a refcursor as a function, like passing it into DBMS_XMLGEN.GETXML.
