Using Cursor Attributes

To process the SQL data manipulation statements, the SQL engine must opens an implicit cursor named SQL. This cursor's attributes (%FOUND, %NOTFOUND, %ISOPEN, and %ROWCOUNT) return all the useful information about the most recently executed SQL data manipulation statement.

The SQL cursor has only one composite attribute, like %BULK_ROWCOUNT that has the semantics of an index-by table. The ith element stores the number of rows processed by the ith execution of the SQL statement. If the ith execution affects no rows, %BULK_ ROWCOUNT(i) returns zero. An illustration is shown below:

DECLARE

TYPE NumList IS TABLE OF NUMBER;

depts NumList := NumList(10, 20, 50);

BEGIN

FORALL j IN depts.FIRST..depts.LAST

UPDATE emp SET sal = sal * 1.10 WHERE deptno = depts(j);

IF SQL%BULK_ROWCOUNT(3) = 0 THEN

...

END IF

END;

The %BULK_ROWCOUNT and the FORALL statement use the similar subscripts. For illustration, if the FORALL statement uses the range -5...10, so does %BULK_ROWCOUNT.