Performance of Oracle BY Ref cursors

Is there any performance issues (or advantages) to using an Oracle Stored Procedure and receiving a BY REF cursor, compared to a straight SQL statement? Thanks, Matt

Can I use Oracle "Tables of Records" with DBI

Can I call the following procedure (PKG_MONTH_SALES.GET_MONTH_TOTALS_BY_ROUTE) and process the "Table of Records" with perl using DBI? PACKAGE PKG_MONTH_SALES IS TYPE tr_Machine_Sales_By_Month IS RECORD ( v_Machine_Id MACHINE.MACHINE_ID%TYPE, v_Location_N