PL/SQL and cursors. Any specialist?

HELP! PL/SQL specialist needed!

Here is my problem:

I've got a piece of code looking like that:

Cursor cur_CONSTANTS (cur_key_1 in NUMBER) is

       select * from CONSTANTS where ((ACCOUNT_NUMBER = cur_key_1);

for MCIF_10 in cur_MCIF_10 loop  

     open cur_CONSTANTS (MCIF_10.ACCOUNT_NUMBER);
     fetch cur_CONSTANTS into CONSTANTS;
               

In the case MCIF_10.ACCOUNT_NUMBER isn't found in table CONSTANTS, cur_CONSTANTS%NOTFOUND is true, but what happens if I reference a field from the cursor, such as cur_CONSTANTS%Department ? Is it's value going to be NULL? undetermined? I need to know because I'm using such expression as:

my_variable = NVL (cur_CONSTANTS%Department, 'default'), assuming that my_variable
will take the value 'default' in case cur_CONSTANTS%NOTFOUND is true.

Until today, cur_CONSTANTS%Department always evaluated to NULL whenever there was no match,
but on a different system, it started returning a value, always the same. Is it normal? I don't
see anything in the documentation about this.

So, NULL or Undertermined?

I know I could test cur_CONSTANTS%NOTFOUND, but this is not the point.

Thank you in advance.

Please e-mail me at stephane_at_chiche.com Received on Fri Aug 02 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST