SUM using PL/SQL?

All,

        I have a million+ rows table with about 18 columns. I'm going to be allowing our users to access this database on our intranet via Netscape in this manner: they will be allowed to do retrievals only, with high-level results being passed back to their browser. These high-level results will be sums or counts based on their inputted retrieval parms.

        We're using Oracle Webserver 2.1's htp/htf procedures& functions to create a selection screen for the user, and the parms which the user selects are passed back to Oracle 7.3.2.3. very well.

        The question: I want to use a PL/SQL procedure(s) which will accept the retrieval parms from the Webserver, do the summing or counting based on those parms, and pass results back to the user. The COUNT function in PL/SQL 2.3 only retruns counts of retrieved rows, while I need counts of internal column values; also, there is no SUM per se within PL/SQL, and I do not want to use SQL within PL/SQL (such as the DBMS_SQL package). Is there a way to do the summing of internal column values using PL/SQL?

		Thanks,
			Tom