Oracle Web Server row retrieval question

Hopefully this is posted to the correct group.

I want to write a stored proc for use with OWS that allows the following behavior:

I have a form for a user to specify the data to retrieve out of a table. If the user specifies a query that returns a large number of rows (more than 20 or 30), then I want to display the first 20 of the rows, and have an anchor allowing the user to go to the next 20 rows, or to the previous 20 rows.

The only way I can think of to do this is using a parameter to the procedure that retrieves the rows that specifies the 'row number' to start with, then use that to skip rows already seen, and also to use it to quite the fetch loop.

This solution seems flawed for a few reasons such as how much of a HACK it is as well as the inability to guarantee that the result set will be exactly the same on subsequent calls.

Is there a way to leave a cursor open on the server, or save the state of it or something for the next call to the server?

Scott Vickery Received on Mon Jul 21 1997 - 00:00:00 CDT