cursor :can you pass order-by as parameter?

Hi, I'm relatively new to ORACLE forms - I hope this makes sense :-)

Looking at : http://www.unix.org.ua/orelly/oracle/prog2/ch06_10.htm#SQL2- CH-6-SECT-10.2
they state:

"The most common place to use a parameter in a cursor is in the WHERE clause, but you can make reference to it anywhere in the SELECT statement, as shown here: "

DECLARE
   CURSOR joke_cur (category_in VARCHAR2)    IS

      SELECT name, category_in, last_used_date
        FROM joke
       WHERE category = UPPER (category_in);

and this works fine. BUT if I want to dynamically order the results like this :

DECLARE
   CURSOR joke_cur (category_in VARCHAR2, sort_key_in VARCHAR2)    IS

      SELECT name, category_in, last_used_date
        FROM joke
       WHERE category = UPPER (category_in)
	  ORDER BY sort_key_in;

I would get back exactly the same results as the first example - the order by clause is ignored.

Does anyone know how to dynamically specify the order by clause within a cursor?

Thanks,

Michael. Received on Wed Mar 31 2004 - 10:03:40 CST