Refcursor or object?

Question

Working on stored procedure which will be called by java app.
I don't know which of the following option is better and in what cases:
1. stored procedure returning/accepting a parameter of SYS_REFCURSOR
or
2. at schema level:
TYPE emp_attrb_obj AS OBJECT (attribute_type_id NUMBER(10),
attribute_val VARCHAR2(50)
create or replace
TYPE emp_attrb_type AS TABLE OF emp_attrb_obj;
and then have a stored procedure accepting or returning a parameter of type emp_attrb_type
Thanks,
RN

Answer 1

RN wrote:
Working on stored procedure which will be called by java app.
I don't know which of the following option is better and in what cases:
1. stored procedure returning/accepting a parameter of SYS_REFCURSOR
or
2. at schema level:
TYPE emp_attrb_obj AS OBJECT (attribute_type_id NUMBER(10),
attribute_val VARCHAR2(50)
create or replace
TYPE emp_attrb_type AS TABLE OF emp_attrb_obj;
and then have a stored procedure accepting or returning a parameter of type emp_attrb_type
Thanks,
RNWell, a java app is unlikely to be able to pass you a ref cursor, so your procedure will not need to accept one. Other than that, it really depends on how much data you expect to get passed back and forth.
I have a number of stored procs called by java apps that return a single row from a table. In those cases, I often return an object, since it saves a step for the jave guys who can use it more or less directly. If there is not an exlplicit limit on the number of rows returned, then I would always return a refcursor.
If the java app needs to pass a set of values into the stored procedure (e.g. get me information about this list of employees), then I would have java pass a table of objects (an array of records) to the stored procedure. This saves me from having to parse out a delimited string of values.
John