Executing Multiple Statements in a Query

Question

Is is possible to pass multiple statements in a query?
ie.
delete from table1
insert into table1 values(1, 'cat')

Answer 1

You can use a refcursor to return a result set from Oracle. Very cool and has been present Oracle since 1995 (Oracle 7'ish days). e.g
procedure foo (arg1 in varchar2, my_cursor in out rc)
is
begin
\t open my_cursor for
\t select * from nov25t1 where col1 = arg1;
end;
This will return a ref cursor from the stored proc. You can use the ref cursor in most programming languages. I happen to be familiar with Java so it would be used as:
(skipping a lot of code....this is just for demo purposes)
OracleCallableStatement stmt = conn.prepareCall(....);
stmt.registerOutParameter(2,OracleTypes.CURSOR);
stmt.execute();
//this is the interesting part
ResultSet rs = (ResultSet) stmt.getObject(2);
The documentation for ref cursors is in:
http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/appdev.920/a96624/06_ora.htm#1554
HTH.
-Raj Suchak
[email protected]