Re-use SELECT statement in several procedures (other than copy-and-paste)

Question

Our site uses a procedure of the following procedure construct to generate Excel spreadsheets:
TYPE retCur is REF CURSOR;
PROCEDURE get_data_for_excel (
  p_filter1 VARCHAR2
  ,p_filter2 VARCHAR2
  ,c_OutCursor out retCur
IS
  retCursor retcur
BEGIN
  BEGIN
  OPEN c_OutCursor FOR
    SELECT XMLELEMENT("TR", XMLFOREST(
       "col1" AS "TD"
       ,"col2" AS "TD"
       ,"col3" AS "TD"
      )).getstringval()DATA FROM (SELECT * FROM
   SELECT col1, col2, col3
   FROM sometable
   WHERE somecolumn = p_filter1
    AND someothercolumn = p_filter2
   ) x);
  END;
END get_data_for_excel
My question is, the subselect:
SELECT col1, col2, col3
FROM sometable
is used in another procedure. Is there a way to reuse the select from the other procedure into this procedure so we don't copy-and-paste each time the other procedure is changed?
Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

This is a design decision you need to make BEFORE it goes into production.
Right now you have
procedure get_data_for_excel (
   p_filter1 VARCHAR2
  ,p_filter2 VARCHAR2
  ,c_OutCursor out retCur );
What, I think jihuyao is trying to say is:  convert it to a pipelined function.
I agree with jihuyao as I have ran into to this problem before.
create type d4e_t as object ( DATA xmltype);
create type d4e_table is table of d4e_t;
create or replace function get_data_for_excel (
   p_filter1 VARCHAR2
  ,p_filter2 VARCHAR2 )
  return d4e_table pipelined;
as
begin
  for curr in ( --start of SELECT statement
SELECT XMLELEMENT("TR", XMLFOREST(
       "col1" AS "TD"
       ,"col2" AS "TD"
       ,"col3" AS "TD"
      )).getstringval()DATA FROM (SELECT * FROM
   SELECT col1, col2, col3
   FROM sometable
   WHERE somecolumn = p_filter1
    AND someothercolumn = p_filter2
   ) x) )
LOOP
  pipe row( d4e_t( curr.data ) );
end loop;
return;
end;
From there, you use it elsewhere as if it were a table.
insert into t
select X.data from table( get_data_for_excel( l_var1, l_var2 ) ) X;
MK