Exceedingly long time for a Procedure to return a Cursor

Question

Hi All,
I have a Package with a procedure that returns a REF CURSOR. The cursor is defined with dynamic SQL. I recently changed the SQL to be bound to improve perf. When I debug, the Open runs quick, and the cursor var looks fine, but when the "End" statement for the proc is reached, it waits for a good 30 secs before terminating execution. If I specify not to load the results in a grid (Using TOAD), it terminates quickly. However, my .Net app using an OracleDataAdapter takes 30-40 secs to get the data also? There's some delay in transferring the cursor var back to the calling thread for some reason.
Main difference in the previous proc to now:
Old call: OPEN shoppingBagContents FOR v_sql;
New call OPEN shoppingBagContents FOR v_sql using a, b; (a,b are bound in sql :a, :b).
shoppingBagContents is defined as OUT ref cursor.
Any help / ideas is greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Running oracle 10g
App .Net 2.0 on XP

Answer 1

Opening a cursor does just that, it opens the cursor. The query (cursor) is not processed until you attempt to fetch it. That's where the processing time comes in.
Are you saying that the processing of the cursor (fetching it) takes longer after your changes than before?
Can you post an example of the code you changed?
For example, if you had dynamic SQL where your predicate never changes, you'd actually want to keep the literal (say ProcessFlag = 'Y' which will ALWAYS be part of the query).
The only things you want to replace / bind are things that will change (or be included / not included) with repeated executions.