Using PARALLEL in Cursor SELECT...

Question

Does using PARALLEL hint in definition of the cursor make any difference? There is significant improvement when it is used as INSERT INTO... AS SELECT... But
does this parallelism concept work when used as a cursor?
DECLARE
CURSOR c_fas_expense
IS
SELECT
/*+ PARALLEL(X,8) */
f.volatility,
  f.div_yield,
  f.exp_life,
FROM gl_fas f
WHERE f.runtime_id = p_runtime_id;
BEGIN
FOR v_fas_expense IN c_fas_expense  LOOP
    UPDATE gl_fas_expense_rpt
    SET volatility = v_fas_expense.volatility,
      div_yield = v_fas_expense.div_yield,
      exp_life = v_fas_expense.exp_life,
      mkt_prc = v_fas_expense.mkt_prc,
    WHERE fas_num = v_fas_expense.fas_num
     AND runtime_id = p_runtime_id;
  END LOOP;
END;

Answer 1

As Nigel said, your update could be done in a single statement which may or may nor benefit from parallelism. You could do it something like:
UPDATE gl_fas_expense_rpt r
SET (volatility, div_yield, exp_life, mkt_prc) =
                (SELECT volatility, div_yield, exp_life, mkt_prc
                 FROM  gl_fas f
                 WHERE r.fas_num = f.fas_num AND
                       r.runtime_id = f.runtime_id)
WHERE r.runtime_id = p_runtime_id AND
      EXISTS (SELECT 1
              FROM  gl_fas f
              WHERE r.fas_num = f.fas_num AND
                    r.runtime_id = f.runtime_id)If gl_fas is, or can be, constrained unique on fas_num and runtime_id then you could also update a join. Based on your current procedure, I strongly suspect that it can be, otherwise you will never know what the real values are. An updateable jpin would look something like:
UPDATE (SELECT r.volatility, r.div_yield, r.exp_life, r.mkt_prc,
               f.volatility new_vol, f.div_yield new_div,
               f.exp_life new_exp, f.mkt_prc new_prc
        FROM gl_fas_expense_rpt r, gl_fas f
        WHERE r.fas_num = f.fas_num AND
              r.runtime_id = f.runtime_id and
              r.runtime_id = p_runtime_id)
SET volatility = new_vol,
    div_yield = new_div,
    exp_life = new_exp,
    div_yield = new_divBy the way, you have an extraneous comma in your cursor definition before the FROM, and in your UPDATE statement before the WHERE.
HTH
John