Several non-Oracle systems allow stored procedures to return result sets, but they do so in different ways. Result set support for non-Oracle databases is typically based on one of the following two models.
Model 1: Result Set Support
When creating a stored procedure, you can explicitly specify the maximum number of result sets that can be returned by that stored procedure. While executing, the stored procedure can open anywhere from zero up to its specified maximum number of result sets. After the execution of the stored procedure, a client program gets handles to these result sets by using either an embedded SQL directive or by calling a client library function. After that, the client program can retrieve from the result set in the same way as from a typical cursor.
Model 2: Result Set Support
In this model, there is no specified limit to the number of result sets that can be returned by a stored procedure. Both Model 1 and Oracle Database have a limit. For Oracle Database, the number of result sets returned by a stored procedure can be at most the number of REF CURSOR OUT arguments. For Model 1, the upper limit is specified using a directive in the stored procedure language. Another way that Model 2 differs from Oracle Database and Model 1 is that they do not return a handle to the result sets. Instead, they place the entire result set on the wire when returning from a stored procedure. For Oracle Database, the handle is the REF CURSOR OUT argument. For Model 1, it is obtained separately after the execution of the stored procedure. For both Oracle Database and Model 1, after the handle is obtained, data from the result set is obtained by doing a fetch on the handle; there are several cursors open and the fetch can be in any order. In the case of Model 2, however, all the data is already on the wire, with the result sets coming in the order determined by the stored procedure and the output arguments of the procedures coming at the end. The entire first result set must be retrieved, then the entire second result set, until all of the results are retrieved. Finally, the stored procedure OUT arguments are retrieved.