Combine select and update into single statement,without bind-variable

Question

I have a problem, that I think is not possible to solve the way I want to, but I just wanted to check before leaving the idea...
I am looking for a way to combine the select and the update statement into one single statement. This is what I wan't to achive: select some data, and update the data selected before returning them.
On this site http://www.psoug.org/reference/update.html I see that the following are possible:
var bnd1 NUMBER
var bnd2 VARCHAR2(30)
var bnd3 NUMBER
UPDATE employees
SET job_id ='SA_MAN', salary = salary + 1000,
department_id = 140
WHERE last_name = 'Jones'
RETURNING salary*0.25, last_name, department_id
INTO :bnd1, :bnd2, :bnd3;
I need to have this as a single statement, and cannot use bind-variables. So I was hoping that something like this could be possible:
UPDATE customer c
SET c.HAS_CREDIT ='1'
WHERE c.HAS_CREDIT = '0'
RETURNING c.CUSTOMER_NO, c.FIRSTNAME, c.LASTNAME
where c.HAS_CREDIT = '1'
But this doesn't compile, complaining of missing into (ORA-00925: missing INTO keyword). And even though I would like this to be possible because this would solve my current problem, I think it would be very confusing. For instance; would the where clause of the returning part be operating after the update or before?
Any comments or suggestions on how to get it work in a single statement, or should I just leave this path straight away?

Answer 1

Hi,
RETURNING only works with bind variables, see
http://download-uk.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/appdev.102/b14261/returninginto_clause.htm#sthref3006
The real problem is that the form of RETURNING clause with bind variables is only valid for single row update or insert statements.
To update (or insert) multiple rows and return the data, you will need to use
RETURNING BULK COLLECT INTO clause. See
http://download-uk.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/appdev.102/b14261/tuning.htm#sthref2236
Cheers,
Colin