How to return multiple values from a function without global types - sql

Question

In an application GUI-Elements can be initialized by using SQL statements.
SELECT name $GUIElement
FROM myTable
WHERE id = 1337;
Since the underlying database structure may change, I am prefering to hide the structure and use an Oracle Package as interface instead. For single values this approach works well with functions like:
SELECT myPackage.getNameByID(1337) $GUIElement
FROM DUAL;
Now I am facing the issue of initializing a list. Original Code:
SELECT name $GUIList
FROM myTable;
To return multiple values from a function I need to define a new SQL type. If the function returns a TABLE OF VARCHAR2 this code works:
SELECT COLUMN_VALUE $GUIList
FROM TABLE(myPackage.getNames())
Unfortunately, I have no rights to create new types on the productive database.
So, is there a way in Oracle to get a similar behaviour without defining a new data type? I have looked into SYS_REFCURSERbut it seems not to work properly.

Answer 1

What about xmltype. The function always returns xml type. And for processing this object you are using xmltable.
Something like this.
create or replace function return_params return xmltype is
result xmltype;
begin
select xmlelement(params,xmlagg(xmlelement(param,xmlforest(name,value,data_type)))) into result from (
select 'param_name1' name, 'param_value1' value , 'varchar2' data_type from dual
union all
select 'param_name2' name, 'param_value2' value , 'varchar2' data_type from dual
union all
select 'param_name3' name, 'param_value3' value , 'varchar2' data_type from dual
); return result;
end;
select * from xmltable('/PARAMS/PARAM' passing return_params
columns name varchar2(1000) path 'NAME'
,value varchar2(1000) path 'VALUE'
,data_type varchar2(1000) path 'DATA_TYPE'
)