Mixing PROCEDURE and FUNCTION - Oracle

Can we mix PROCEDURE and FUNCTION together in a single program? Why not? After all, any of those two belongs to “sub-program.” And a PL/SQL program can include any number of sub-programs (regardless of whether the sub-program involves PROCEDURE or FUNCTION). Let us look at a practical example of this issue:

declare

function getDname(p_deptno dept.deptno%type) return varchar2 is

v_dname dept.dname%type;

begin

select dname into v_dname

from dept where deptno = p_deptno;

return v_dname;

end;

procedure dispEmp is

CURSOR c_emp is

select ename,deptno from emp;

begin

for r_emp in c_emp

loop

dbms_output.put_line(r_emp.ename || ',' || getDname(r_emp.deptno));

end loop;

end;

BEGIN

dispEmp;

END;

I just modified the program given in the previous section to follow this topic. From the above program, first of all there exist no variable declarations in the main program. The declaration of CURSOR as well as the FOR loop to the CURSOR have been encapsulated into a separate procedure named ‘dispEmp’. So, there exists literally no processing to deal with at the main program, apart from calling the procedure ‘dispEmp’.