Re: Proc or Function

Answers embedded

Hth,

Sybrand Bakker, Oracle DBA

Steven Cardinal <scardinal_at_nospamyahoo.com> wrote in message news:88har6$3e6_at_chronicle.concentric.net...
> Hello,
> We are running 8.0.5EE on Solaris7 as a backend to an Apache webserver
> using Coldfusion as an application server. I have my developers trying to
> put as much logic and error checking into Oracle as possible, but we're
> running into some snags.
> We are using a function to perform logins and create logins (web logins,
> not Oracle logins). these work fine becase the web page passes parameters
> and tests for a return value to show success or failure.
> However, we want to also have strings returned from the database to
> poulate web pages. I think functions can only return a single numeric
> value, is that correct?

No. A function can return any single value as long as it is defined as type. This means both the normal types (number, integer, varchar2), as self-defined types

Also, I've heard that Oracle stored procs do not
> return data - true?

No, Don't know where you heard that, the person absolutely knows nothing about PL/SQL

> I would like to create a proc, as I can in other RDBMS's that basically
> does:
>
> select NAME, ADRESS, CITY, STATE, ZIP from USERTABLE
> where NAME = 'JOE'
>
> as
> EXECUTE sp_myproc
> and have the resulting 5 fields displayed in my web page.
You'll need a REF CURSOR.
Check out http://osi.oracle.com/~tkyte/ResultSets/index.html

(I
don't think I
> can use multiple queries to set session output etc, within the page)
>
> Any tips? Can Oracle do this?
>
> Thanks
> Steve
>
>
Received on Thu Feb 17 2000 - 00:00:00 CST