Number of rows affected by an UPDATE in PL/SQL

Question

I have a PL/SQL function (running on Oracle 10g) in which I update some rows. Is there a way to find out how many rows were affected by the UPDATE? When executing the query manually it tells me how many rows were affected, I want to get that number in PL/SQL.

Answer 1

You use the sql%rowcount variable.

You need to call it straight after the statement which you need to find the affected row count for.

For example:

set serveroutput ON; 
DECLARE 
    i NUMBER; 
BEGIN 
    UPDATE employees 
    SET    status = 'fired' 
    WHERE  name LIKE '%Bloggs'; 
    i := SQL%rowcount; 
    --note that assignment has to precede COMMIT
    COMMIT; 
    dbms_output.Put_line(i); 
END;