Here is an example with an implicit cursor (I had to look up the syntax because I almost always use explicit cursors):

DECLARE
somevariable scott.emp%ROWTYPE;
BEGIN
SELECT *
INTO somevariable
FROM scott.emp
WHERE empno = 1891;
DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line (somevariable.empno || ', ' || somevariable.ename);
END;
/

The implicit cursor can deal with only with queries that return a single row.

If I recall correctly, implicit cursors require two calls to the database -- one to check to see if only one row will be returned, and one to actually get the row. So I am reluctant to use them because this seems awfully inefficient. But maybe someone knows whether implicit cursors really do have a performance disadvantage over explicit cursors.

CliffW