Find if update changed something or not

Question

Hi folks,
If you have a procedure that takes 10 parameters and updates a table. How would you check if something was really updated? The only way I know how to do this is to query the table and then compare input parameters with the query to see if anything changed. If someone updates data and changes it compared to previous state I need to return 1 or 0 if update did not change anything.
Is there any other way of finding this information?
Best regards,
Igor

Answer 1

Not good
declare
  l_rowcount number := 0;
begin
  for i in 1 .. 10
  loop
    update employees_temp
       set something = 1
     where id = 1;
    l_rowcount := l_rowcount + sql%rowcount;
    dbms_output.put_line('No: ' || to_char(sql%rowcount));
  end loop;
  dbms_output.put_line('Total No: ' || l_rowcount);
end;If you execute update it doesnt mean you actually changed the data. I need to know if update changed the data or it got updated to same thing as it were before.
Best regards,
Igor