Oracle deref object from objects table

I would like to know what is the best way to get an object from an Oracle object table into a deref variable.

This is my actual method, lets suppose the type:

create or replace TYPE person AS OBJECT (
  dni            VARCHAR2(20),
  nom            VARCHAR2(20),
  MAP MEMBER FUNCTION get_dni RETURN varchar2
);

create or replace TYPE BODY person AS
  MAP MEMBER FUNCTION get_dni RETURN varchar2 IS
  BEGIN
    RETURN dni;
  END;
END;

With this objects table:

create table partners of person;

Then, to get a person into a var I do:

declare
    a_person person;
begin
    select deref(ref(p)) into a_person
      from partners p 
     where p.dni = 1;
    ...
end;

Is there a more elegant way to get unref object?

Seems that there are no really elegant alternative for your style of table declaration.

Only variant below, but it seems to be less elegant than yours:

declare
  a_person person;
begin
  select person(p.dni, p.nom) into a_person
  from partners p 
  where p.dni = 1;
end;

I.e. decompose object to fields and construct it back.

But if you declare table with object type field, e.g.

create table new_partners (pers person)

then access would be much simpler:

declare
  a_person person;
begin
  select p.pers into a_person
  from new_partners p 
  where p.pers.dni = 1;
end;

SQLFiddle