Summary

The main points we learned in this chapter are:

• You can return multiple rows

• You can return multiple rows of complex data, similar to a SELECT query

• You can return several sets of tables and have them possibly evaluated in a lazy manner by using refcursors

• You can return data as complex as you want using either XML or JSON

So there really are very few reasons for not using database functions as your main interaction mechanism with the database. In the next chapter, we will learn how to call functions when different types of events occur in the database.