PL/SQL Cursors example

Introduction

PL/SQL provides a number of different ways for data retrieval all of which include working with cursors. You can think of cursor as a pointer to the results of a query run against one or more tables in current database. PL/SQL cursor and Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) cursors also share some similarities. Now when Oracle buys Sun it is only matter of time when we will have natural mapping between JDBC cursors and PL/SQL cursors! :) Only kidding here, this things should never be mixed together because JDBC spec should be independent from vendor and it is designed to prevent vendor locking and whole point of Java are clever interfaces and delegation of vendor specific stuff to vendor.

Ok, let's get back to point of this tutorial.

Why use cursors? Well when you retrieve subset of data from table (or whole table), then that data remains stored in SGA (Shared memory) until cursor is closed, so in this way you cache data and caching on database is good idea.

Choosing explicit or implicit cursor in your PL/SQL program?

Implicit cursors are used when you have a simple SELECT ... INTO single row of data into local program variables. It's the easiest path to your data, but it can often lead to coding the same or similar SELECTs in multiple places in your code.

Explicit cursors are defined in declaration section (package or block) and in this way, you can open and fetch from cursor in one or more places.

Implicit cursor will run more efficient than equivalent explicit cursor (from Oracle 8 Database onwards). So is there reasons to use explicit cursors at all? Off course. Explicit cursor can still be more efficient and they off course offer much programmatic control.

Implicit cursor

Implicit cursors are used when you need to retrieve single row from database. If you want to retrieve more than one row, then you must use either an explicit cursor or bulk collect.

Here one example of implicit cursor usage:

SET serveroutput on;

DECLARE

   PROCEDURE find_employee (employee_id_v employees.employee_id%TYPE)
   IS
      --Record in which we will fetch entire row.  
      emp_rec   employees%ROWTYPE;
   BEGIN
      --Begining of implicit cursor statement.
      SELECT *
        INTO emp_rec --Fetch into record.
        FROM employees
       WHERE employee_id = employee_id_v;
       --Write result.
      DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line (emp_rec.employee_id || ' ' || emp_rec.first_name);
   --Catch exception when there is no such employee.
   EXCEPTION
      WHEN NO_DATA_FOUND
      THEN         
         DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ('Unknown employee with id: ' || employee_id_v);
   END find_employee;
BEGIN
   find_employee (101);
   find_employee (102);
   --This one will produce exeption (OK, only if you do not have employee  with id 1021).
   find_employee (1021);
END;

We encapsulate query with function (this is _aways_ a good idea). This function print employee information from database to output. Also we introduce some exception handling (when
no employee is found).

Because PL/SQL is so tightly integrated with the Oracle database, you can easily retrieve complex datatypes (entire row for example - as we did in our example).

You can see that using implicit cursor is quite simple (with basic understanding of SQL) we just create simple select statement and insert rowset into record (that we declared as local variable).

Explicit cursor

Explicit cursor is explicitly defined in the declaration section. With explicit cursor, you have complete control over the different PL/SQL steps involved in retrieving information from the database. You decide when to open, when fetch and how many records and when to close cursor. Information about the current state of cursor is available through examination of cursor attributes.

Example:

SET SERVEROUTPUT on;

DECLARE
   PROCEDURE get_all_employees
   IS
      --Employee record variable.
      employee_rec   employees%ROWTYPE;
      --Cursor variable for explicit use.
      CURSOR employee_cur
      IS
         SELECT *
           FROM employees;
   BEGIN
      --Open cursor so you can use it.      
      OPEN employee_cur;
      --Go through all employees.
      LOOP
         --Load current row from cursor into employee record. 
         FETCH employee_cur
          INTO employee_rec;
         --Loop until cursor attribute signals that no rows are found.
         EXIT WHEN employee_cur%NOTFOUND;
         DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line (   employee_rec.employee_id
                               || ', '
                               || employee_rec.first_name
                              );
      END LOOP;

      CLOSE employee_cur;
   EXCEPTION
      --Remember to close cursor even if there was some error.
      WHEN OTHERS
      THEN
         IF employee_cur%ISOPEN
         THEN
            CLOSE employee_cur;
         END IF;
   END get_all_employees;
BEGIN
   get_all_employees ();
END;

This PL/SQL block performs following:
Declare the cursor.
Declare а record based on that cursor.
Open the cursor.
Fetch rows until there are no rows left.
Close cursor.
Handle exception and close cursor if it is not closed.

You can see that in this way we have complete control of cursor variable and cursor initialization, fetching and so on.