How to test an Oracle Stored Procedure with RefCursor return type?

Question

I\'m looking for a good explanation on how to test an Oracle stored procedure in SQL Developer or Embarcardero Rapid XE2. Thank you.

Answer 1

Something like this lets you test your procedure on almost any client:

DECLARE 
  v_cur SYS_REFCURSOR;
  v_a   VARCHAR2(10);
  v_b   VARCHAR2(10);
BEGIN
  your_proc(v_cur);

  LOOP
    FETCH v_cur INTO v_a, v_b;
    EXIT WHEN v_cur%NOTFOUND;
    dbms_output.put_line(v_a || ' ' || v_b);
  END LOOP;
  CLOSE v_cur;
END;

Basically, your test harness needs to support the definition of a SYS_REFCURSOR variable and the ability to call your procedure while passing in the variable you defined, then loop through the cursor result set. PL/SQL does all that, and anonymous blocks are easy to set up and maintain, fairly adaptable, and quite readable to anyone who works with PL/SQL.

Another, albeit similar way would be to build a named procedure that does the same thing, and assuming the client has a debugger (like SQL Developer, PL/SQL Developer, TOAD, etc.) you could then step through the execution.