I am returning REF Cursors to an external interface. I want code to test each of these procedures. The problem is that these queries often have 25+ columns in them from several tables. My test procedure really only needs 1 column to verify the query executes and so I can trace it to check the plan. so I am looking for something like fetch myrefcursor.FIRSTCOLUMNONLY in l_myval Without having to make a new procedure that either has a ref cursor with just 1 column in the select clause . The problem with this option is that every time I change a query, I have to change the code in 2 places. This can easily get out of synch. -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l