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5.2 PLSQL Chapter 5 PDF

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5.2 PLSQL Chapter 5 PDF

Uploaded by

phanidhar paluri
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Chapter – 5

Cursors

Let’s make coding fun!


Cursors
Oracle engine uses work area for its internal processing in
order to execute an SQL statements. This work area is private to
SQL operations called CURSOR. Data stored in Cursor called
Active Data set. Oracle creates a memory area, known as the
context area, for processing an SQL statement, which contains all
the information needed for processing the statement; for example,
the number of rows processed, etc. A cursor is a pointer to this
context area. PL/SQL controls the context area through a cursor. A
cursor holds the rows (one or more) returned by a SQL statement.
The set of rows the cursor holds is referred to as the active set.
You can name a cursor so that it could be referred to in a program
to fetch and process the rows returned by the SQL statement, one
at a time.
types of Cursors

Implicit Cursors

Implicit cursors are automatically created by Oracle whenever


an SQL statement is executed, when there is no explicit cursor for
the statement. Programmers cannot control the implicit cursors and
the information in it. Whenever a DML statement (INSERT, UPDATE
and DELETE) is issued, an implicit cursor is associated with this
statement. For INSERT operations, the cursor holds the data that
needs to be inserted. For UPDATE and DELETE operations, the
cursor identifies the rows that would be affected. In PL/SQL, you
can refer to the most recent implicit cursor as the SQL cursor,
which always has attributes. The SQL cursor has additional
attributes and %BULK_EXCEPTIONS, designed for use with the
FORALL statement.
The following table provides the description of the most used
attributes −

Returns TRUE if an INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE statement


%FOUND affected one or more rows or a SELECT INTO statement
returned one or more rows. Otherwise, it returns FALSE.

Always returns FALSE for implicit cursors, because Oracle


%ISOPEN closes the SQL cursor automatically after executing its
associated SQL statement
The logical opposite of %FOUND. It returns TRUE if an INSERT,
%NOTFOUND UPDATE, or DELETE statement affected no rows, or a SELECT
INTO statement returned no rows. Otherwise, it returns FALSE.
Returns the number of rows affected by an INSERT, UPDATE,
%ROWCOUNT or DELETE statement, or returned by a SELECT INTO
statement.

Explicit Cursors

Explicit cursors are programmer-defined cursors for gaining more


control over the context area. An explicit cursor should be defined
in the declaration section of the PL/SQL Block. It is created on a
SELECT Statement which returns more than one row. The syntax
for creating an explicit cursor is –

CURSOR cursor_name IS select_statement;

Working with an explicit cursor includes the following steps −

 Declaring the cursor for initializing the memory


 Opening the cursor for allocating the memory
 Fetching the cursor for retrieving the data
 Closing the cursor to release the allocated memory
Declaring the Cursor

Declaring the cursor defines the cursor with a name and the
associated SELECT statement.

For example −

CURSOR c_customers IS SELECT id, name, address FROM


customers;

Opening the Cursor

Opening the cursor allocates the memory for the cursor and makes
it ready for fetching the rows returned by the SQL statement into it.
For example, we will open the above defined cursor as follows −

OPEN c_customers;

Fetching the Cursor

Fetching the cursor involves accessing one row at a time. For


example, we will fetch rows from the above-opened cursor as follows

FETCH c_customers INTO c_id, c_name, c_addr;


Closing the Cursor

Closing the cursor means releasing the allocated memory. For


example, we will close the above-opened cursor as follows −

CLOSE c_customers;
Example

Following is a complete example to illustrate the concepts of explicit


cursors:

DECLARE
c_id customers.id%type;
c_name customerS.No.ame%type;
c_addr customers.address%type;
CURSOR c_customers is
SELECT id, name, address FROM customers;
BEGIN
OPEN c_customers;
LOOP
FETCH c_customers into c_id, c_name, c_addr;
EXIT WHEN c_customers%notfound;
dbms_output.put_line(c_id || ' ' || c_name || ' ' || c_addr);
END LOOP;
CLOSE c_customers; END; /
ConClusion
In this chapter, we explained about Cursors, types of cursors,
example of types of cursor and different uses of cursors in
application.

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