Create an Oracle function that returns a table

Solution 1:

I think you want a pipelined table function.

Something like this:

CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE test AS

    TYPE measure_record IS RECORD(
       l4_id VARCHAR2(50), 
       l6_id VARCHAR2(50), 
       l8_id VARCHAR2(50), 
       year NUMBER, 
       period NUMBER,
       VALUE NUMBER);

    TYPE measure_table IS TABLE OF measure_record;

    FUNCTION get_ups(foo NUMBER)
        RETURN measure_table
        PIPELINED;
END;

CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE BODY test AS

    FUNCTION get_ups(foo number)
        RETURN measure_table
        PIPELINED IS

        rec            measure_record;

    BEGIN
        SELECT 'foo', 'bar', 'baz', 2010, 5, 13
          INTO rec
          FROM DUAL;

        -- you would usually have a cursor and a loop here   
        PIPE ROW (rec);

        RETURN;
    END get_ups;
END;

For simplicity I removed your parameters and didn't implement a loop in the function, but you can see the principle.

Usage:

SELECT *
  FROM table(test.get_ups(0));



L4_ID L6_ID L8_ID       YEAR     PERIOD      VALUE
----- ----- ----- ---------- ---------- ----------
foo   bar   baz         2010          5         13
1 row selected.

Solution 2:

To return the whole table at once you could change the SELECT to:

SELECT  ...
BULK COLLECT INTO T
FROM    ...

This is only advisable for results that aren't excessively large, since they all have to be accumulated in memory before being returned; otherwise consider the pipelined function as suggested by Charles, or returning a REF CURSOR.