Oracle/PLSQL: OPEN Statement

Once you've declared your cursor, the next step is to open the cursor.

The basic syntax to OPEN the cursor is:

OPEN cursor_name;

For example, you could open a cursor called c1 with the following command:

OPEN c1;

Below is a function that demonstrates how to use the OPEN statement:

CREATE OR REPLACE Function FindCourse
   ( name_in IN varchar2 )
   RETURN number
IS
    cnumber number;

    CURSOR c1
    IS
       SELECT course_number
        from courses_tbl
        where course_name = name_in;

BEGIN

open c1;
fetch c1 into cnumber;

if c1%notfound then
     cnumber := 9999;
end if;

close c1;

RETURN cnumber;

END;