returning certain rows from a SELECT

Hello, I'm new to Oracle, maybe my approach here is completely wrong, but here's my problem:

I am using Oracle8 through Perl's DBI. I would like to obtain specific row-ranges from my SELECT statements, i.e., give me rows 26-50 of 'SELECT * FROM foo'.

I can get this to work nicely in SQLPLUS using a cursor, loop, and %ROWCOUNT, but these results are all printed to the screen, inserted into a temporary table, or something similar.

How can I make a function (?) or something similar (?) that will return rows that DBI will understand?

I imagine something like

"SELECT * FROM complicated_query(26,50)"

or even

"SELECT * FROM slice_query('SELECT foo,bar FROM quux',26,50);

and while I could construct the query with the dbms_sql package, I'm not sure how to make the procedure or function return the rows.

or is there a way to get Perl/DBI to understand dbms_output lines?

Thanks in advance. Received on Thu Jul 08 1999 - 17:28:13 CDT