FETCH arbitrary columns from a ref_cursor

The problem is as follows:
I have a stored proc. that returns a types.ref_cursor (where types.ref_cursor is defined as 'ref cursor'): PROCEDURE P(c OUT TYPES.ref_cursor);
The returned cursor has a bunch of columns, but I only need a few of them. Anyway, with FETCH INTO I have to provide variables for every column. So I have to do this:
 var1 Type1;
 var2 Type2;
 ...
 FETCH c INTO var1, var2, ..., var20, ... var_n; Where Type1, etc. ... are as specified in the documentation of P. (Since I couldn't find a way to determine the record type of an arbitrary ref_cursor.)
Is there a way to make this type of situation easier? Some solutions came into my mind, such as:

1. I could declare a variable with the type c%ROWTYPE or something.
2. I could FETCH only the columns that I need, e.g. FETCH c(col1, col5, col7) INTO var1, var5, var7;
3. I could somehow find a way for the procedure to return something other than a ref_cursor which seems a nightmare to work with.

Unfortunately, I have found nothing like this either on the net or in the Oracle documentation.

Any ideas?

Thx Received on Tue Aug 17 2004 - 08:11:34 CDT