Declaring cursors

Greetings When I DECLARE a fairly trivial cursor to SELECT rows from a large table (where the SELECT uses indexes) how "expensive" is it in terms of processing time ? eg are query plans updated/created etc when I execute the declare ? Regards, John

John Shepherd wrote: > > Greetings > When I DECLARE a fairly trivial cursor to SELECT rows from a large table > (where the SELECT uses indexes) how "expensive" is it in terms of Not expensive at all. Besides there is not other choice, if you want data you have to declare a cursor! > processing time ? eg are query plans updated/created etc when I execute > the declare ? Query plans are developed when a statements is PREPARED. If you skip the PREPARE step and DECLARE a CURSOR on an SQL string an implied PREPARE is executed for you at that time. If the developed query plan is no longer valid, for example because the table has been altered or UPDATE STATS has been run and the stats have significantly changed, an OPEN of the cursor will return sqlcode -710. Art S. Kagel