What is Ref Cursor

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\pard\li720 A Ref Cursor is a pointer to a server side cursor variable. The stored procedure returns a reference to a cursor that is open and populated by a select statement to be used as a block Data source\par
REF cursors hold cursors in the same way that VARCHAR2 variables hold strings. \par
This is an added feature that comes with PL/SQL v2.2. A REF cursor allows a cursor to be opened on the server and passed to the client as a unit rather than one row at a time. One can use a Ref cursor as a target of assignments and can be passed as parameters to the Program Units. Ref cursors are opened with an OPEN FOR statement and in all other ways, they are the same as regular cursors.\par
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