PL/SQL FOR LOOP IMPLICIT CURSOR

Question

There are 2 tables EMPLOYEES and DEPARTMENTS with department_id as primary key for DEPARTMENTS and foreign key on EMPLOYEES.

I want to print all the employee names that belong to a particular department. I know it can be easily achieved by JOINS or EXPLICIT cursors. I thought why not try with FOR loop and a IMPLICIT cursors.

My question is if it is syntactically correct to write INTO like this. If so why is not assigning any values?

DECLARE
    emp_dept_id employees.department_id%TYPE;
    emp_emp_id employees.employee_id%TYPE;
    emp_last_name employees.last_name%TYPE;
    dept_dept_id departments.department_id%TYPE;
    dept_dept_name departments.department_name%TYPE;
    v_count number DEFAULT 0;
BEGIN
    FOR i IN (SELECT DISTINCT department_id, department_name
                INTO dept_dept_id, dept_dept_name
        FROM departments)
    LOOP
        --v_COUNT := v_COUNT + 1;
        DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('HELLO'||dept_dept_id||' '||dept_dept_name);
        FOR j IN (SELECT employee_id, last_name
            INTO emp_emp_id, emp_last_name
            FROM employees)
            --WHERE department_id=dept_dept_id)
        LOOP
            DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(emp_emp_id||' '||emp_last_name);
            v_COUNT := v_COUNT + 1;
        END LOOP;
    END LOOP;
    DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(v_COUNT);
END;

Answer 1

You don't use INTO with an implicit cursor:

    DECLARE
        emp_dept_id employees.department_id%TYPE;
        emp_emp_id employees.employee_id%TYPE;
        emp_last_name employees.last_name%TYPE;
        v_count number DEFAULT 0;
    BEGIN
        FOR i IN (SELECT DISTINCT department_id, department_name
            FROM departments)
        LOOP
            --v_COUNT := v_COUNT + 1;
            DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('HELLO'||i.department_id||' '||i.department_name);
            FOR j IN (SELECT employee_id, last_name
                INTO emp_emp_id, emp_last_name
                FROM employees)
                --WHERE department_id=i.department_id)
            LOOP
                DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(emp_emp_id||' '||emp_last_name);
                v_COUNT := v_COUNT + 1;
            END LOOP;
        END LOOP;
        DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(v_COUNT);
    END;
    /

Answer 2

Check this page: http://www.techonthenet.com/oracle/loops/cursor_for.php.

I don't think what you're trying to do is valid. Break this up into two steps: the FOR loop and the INTO. You can still have a SELECT in the FOR IN, it just can't be an INTO.