Proc or function to return a table

I would like to write a proc or a function (I think 2nd is better) that, accepting a table name as argument should return a table itself.

Scenario:

I have a matricial representation of a table in another table:

tab_matr:

i j value

1 1 200
1 2 400
2 1 150
2 2 500
3 1 750
3 2 600
...
...

I wrote an anonymous block that transform these values into a table like this:

200 400
150 500
750 600
...
...

I would like to write a proc to simply do something like this:

begin

     some_proc('tab_matr');
end;

This is important because I'll have to join the resultset with other tables or other resultsets coming from same function with another table name as argument:

begin

     select
           x.somcolumn,
           y.someothercolumn
     from
           some_proc('tab_matr') x
     join
           some_proc('other_tab') y         on x.id = y.id;

I'm quite a newbie in PL/SQL and I would get best way to start, possibly to avoid writing non efficient code and using all functionality and performance of PL/SQL.

Best regards to all. Received on Fri Sep 01 2006 - 03:56:57 CDT