Handling a List returned from a Stored Oracle Procedure

Question

I'm trying to put a PL/SQL oracle wrapper around some post code lookup
software.
We're planning to get the wrapper to return a List and then JDBC to handle this list.
Has anyone already done/attempted to do this? Does anyone know if it can be done using a List and can oracle stored procedures return a List?

Answer 1

It appears that Oracle does support an array type:
In Oracle
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION getEmpArray RETURN EMPARRAY
AS
l_data EmpArray := EmpArray();
CURSOR c_emp IS SELECT ename FROM EMP;
BEGIN
FOR emp_rec IN c_emp LOOP
l_data.extend;
l_data(l_data.count) := emp_rec.ename;
END LOOP;
RETURN l_data;
END;
In Java
public static void main( ) {
  OracleCallableStatement stmt =(OracleCallableStatement)conn.prepareCall
                ( "begin ? := getEMpArray; end;" );
    // The name we use below, EMPARRAY, has to match the name of the
    // type defined in the PL/SQL Stored Function
    stmt.registerOutParameter( 1, OracleTypes.ARRAY,"EMPARRAY" );
    stmt.executeUpdate();
    // Get the ARRAY object and print the meta data assosiated with it
    ARRAY simpleArray = stmt.getARRAY(1);
    System.out.println("Array is of type " +  simpleArray.getSQLTypeName());
    System.out.println("Array element is of type code "+simpleArray.getBaseType());
    System.out.println("Array is of length " + simpleArray.length());
    // Print the contents of the array
    String[] values = (String[])simpleArray.getArray();
    for( int i = 0; i < values.length; i++ )
      System.out.println( "row " + i + " = '" + values[i] +"'" );
This was taken from:
http://otn.oracle.com/sample_code/tech/java/codesnippet/jdbc/varray/index.html