Re: variable datatype returning

it is very unclear what you are trying to do, especially since the code you included does not have a valid syntax

strictly speaking, procedures do not have return values (only functions have return values, but both functions and procedures can have OUT or IN OUT variables, as in your example) -- so you may be using the wrong construct

the return datatype, or OUT variable datatype, will be whatever you declare it to be -- if the value you assign to it is of a different datatype (not recommended, oracle does implicit datatype conversion (also not recommended in most cased)

i'm guessing that you might be referring to determining return datatypes for dynamic sql (although that's not apparent from your post), the DBMS_SQL package has procedures for determining the datatypes returned by SELECT statements.

at any rate, some clarification on what you're trying to accomplish would be helpful
--mcs

"thepercival" <member22660_at_dbforums.com> wrote in message news:3571546.1068204791_at_dbforums.com...
>
> Hello,
>
>
>
> I have a stored procedure and the return data type is number(16) as you
> can see. but I get it back in the code as a var_numeric and then the
> precision depends on the value of the returndata. So 0 fits into a short
> so I have to convert to a short, although I say that my stored procedure
> has to return a NUMBER(16), thus int. Can anyone tell me how I can
> determine my return datatype beforehand?
>
>
>
> many thanks
>
>
>
> CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE ish.applsp_IsForeignKeyProtected
>
> (
>
> cDbd IN VARCHAR2,
>
> cTable IN VARCHAR2,
>
> cFKey IN VARCHAR2,
>
> rc1 IN OUT refcurpkg.rct1
>
> ) AS
>
> IsProtected NUMBER(16);
>
> BEGIN
>
> IsProtected := 1;
>
>
>
> OPEN rc1 FOR
>
> SELECT IsProtected FROM DUAL;
>
> END;
>
>
> --
> Posted via http://dbforums.com
Received on Fri Nov 07 2003 - 13:57:10 CET