Benefits of cursors?

We were just wondering if anyone can explain what Informix does with a cursor that makes it more efficient than a select statement? Does it circumvent optimizing the statement multiple times? Any help would be appreciated. -- /************************************************************** * Ryan McFall * * Dept. of Computer Science * * Michigan State University * * mcfallry@cps.msu.edu * * * * My statments do not reflect the opinions of MSU, * * Heck, they probably don't even make sense! * *************************************************************/