Aggregate Assignment

The %ROWTYPE declaration cannot include an initialization clause. Though, there are two ways to assign values to all fields in a record at once. At First, the PL/SQL allows the aggregate assignment between the whole records if their declarations refer to the similar table or cursor. For illustration, the assignment below is legal:

DECLARE
dept_rec1 dept%ROWTYPE;
dept_rec2 dept%ROWTYPE;
CURSOR c1 IS SELECT deptno, dname, loc FROM dept;
dept_rec3 c1%ROWTYPE;
BEGIN
...
dept_rec1 := dept_rec2;
However, because dept_rec2 is based on a table and dept_rec3 is based on a
cursor, the following assignment is illegal:
dept_rec2 := dept_rec3; -- illegal
Secondly, you can assign a list of column values to a record by using the SELECT or FETCH statement, as the illustration below shows. The column names should appear in the order in which they are defined by the CREATE TABLE or CREATE VIEW statement.


DECLARE
dept_rec dept%ROWTYPE;
...
BEGIN
SELECT deptno, dname, loc INTO dept_rec FROM dept
WHERE deptno = 30;