Function with more than one return value

Question

Hi
Please let me know how to write a function with more than one return value and in what scenario should we go for this option.
Thank you

Answer 1

user12540019 wrote:
Please let me know how to write a function with more than one return value and in what scenario should we go for this option.Yes. And the following is the correct approach (using OUT variables is not!) - you deal with the multiple values as a data structure. This example uses an custom (user-defined) SQL data type as the structure.
SQL> create or replace type TXYcoord is object(
  2          x       number,                  
  3          y       number                   
  4  );                                       
  5  /                                        
Type created.
SQL>
SQL>
SQL> create or replace function fooCoordinate( someParam number ) return TXYCoord is
  2  begin                                                                         
  3          -- doing some kind of calculation using input parameters              
  4          --  etc..
  5
  6          -- returning the multiple return values as a proper data structure
  7          return(
  8                  TXYcoord( 0, 0 )
  9          );
10  end;
11  /
Function created.
SQL>
SQL> -- selecting the data structure
SQL> select
  2          sysdate,
  3          fooCoordinate(123)      as XY
  4  from       dual;
SYSDATE             XY(X, Y)
2010-02-01 08:49:23 TXYCOORD(0, 0)
SQL>
SQL> -- selecting the properties/fields of the data structure
SQL> select
  2          sysdate,
  3          treat( fooCoordinate(123) as TXYcoord).x        as X,
  4          treat( fooCoordinate(123) as TXYcoord).y        as Y
  5  from       dual;
SYSDATE                      X          Y
2010-02-01 08:49:23          0          0
SQL>