stored procedure variable persistence

How can I carry over a result set/varible from one procedure call to another?

Say I have a table with 500 entries, that I want to feed to a program outside the Oracle server, that is calling my stored procedure repeatedly. The first time, I want to return some info based on row 1, next time row 2, etc.

Can I keep an internal variable that will keep track of this? My guess is I would get row 1, then row 1, etc. as the procedure was called repeatedly.

Should I store a database record that has the last row returned? What is the performance penalty here (if I make a table with just 1 row, with a key for table name and a number as the only other record) and then do a update each time.
Jay M. Scheiner
Programmer/Analyst
Wolpoff & Abramson, LLP
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To email, remove _nospm_ from address. Received on Fri Mar 31 2000 - 00:00:00 CST