GetProcedureColumns doesn't distinquish between OUT param and Record column

Question

HI. My problem is that when I do a getProcedureColumns call for
my stored procedure, I cannot distinquish between the stored
procedure OUT parameters and columns in the result set record. Both
are shown to be OUT parameters.
My stored procedure is defined as follows:
PROCEDURE MyProcedure
(state IN VARCHAR2, MyCur OUT MYPACKAGE.MyCurType, Zip OUT VARCHAR2) AS
BEGIN
     OPEN MyCur FOR SELECT ACT_NAME, ACT_STATUS from sysadm.act;
END;
and MyCurType is a REF cursor pointing to a result set
record which is defined as follows:
TYPE MyRec is RECORD
NAME VARCHAR2(100),
STATUS VARCHAR2(100)
AND the REF CURSOR is defined as follows:
TYPE MyCurType is REF CURSOR RETURN MyRec;
When I do getProcedureColumns on the procedure, I get the following:
COL_NAME COL_TYPE TYPE_NAME
STATE 1.0 VARCHAR2
MYCUR 4.0 REF CURSOR
<blank> 4.0 PL/SQL RECORD
NAME 4.0 VARCHAR2
STATUS 4.0 VARCHAR2
ZIP 4.0 VARCHAR2
As you can see, STATE, MYCUR, NAME, STATUS and ZIP are all shown as OUT columns. MYCUR is the only true OUT parameter, but I can't tell this. The reason I need to know this because I need to dynamically build the PrepareCall statment. Any help would be very greatly appreciated.
Thanks

Answer 1

It would somewhat help if you describe your MyCurType as just REF CURSOR:
type MyCurType is ref cursor;
Then, the number of parameters and the number of columns in the result set become equal (at least for me, though I use function with one OUT parameter (return result) and one IN parameter).
Also, you might want to check the field #5 of the getProcedureColumns's ResultSet: it is probably equal to # procedureColumnResult for NAME and STATUS in your case, and you might wish only account for procedureColumnIn(Out,InOut).
Unfortunately, all that might be useless for you if you are trying to do the same thing as I am. The reason is that Oracle driver returns 1111 (java.sql.Types.OTHER) as a type id for REF CURSOR from getProcedureColumns but it does not accept it back in registerOutputParameter(), contrary to the JDBC specification. It only accepts Oracle specific type oracle.jdbc.OracleTypes.CURSOR (-11) for REF CURSOR output parameters and I am not aware of any way to get it back from meta-info using JDBC standard :-(. Please let me know if you are aware of such a way.