Once you've declared your cursor, the next step is to open the cursor. The basic syntax to OPEN the cursor is: OPEN cursor_name; For example, you could open a cursor called c1 with the following command: OPEN c1; Below is a function that demonstrates how to use the OPEN statement: CREATE OR REPLACE Function FindCourse ( name_in IN varchar2 ) RETURN number IS cnumber number; CURSOR c1 IS SELECT course_number from courses_tbl where course_name = name_in; BEGIN open c1; fetch c1 into cnumber; if c1%notfound then cnumber := 9999; end if; close c1; RETURN cnumber; END;