Re: Benefits of cursors?

Heinrich Seebauer (heinrich@castor.mai.de) wrote: : In article <2t1tgb$oab@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> mcfallry@cps.msu.edu (Ryan L Mcfall) writes: : > 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? : > : As I understood it, a cursor is the device used to align the different : impedances between some application program and the relational model. : A query may return a whole bunch of rows, whereas a sequential program : must get them one by one. : H. Carrying it one step further, even if a select could show you more than one row, it wouldn't allow you to scroll or do relative/absolute fetches of rows based on some outside stimuli. -- gburnore@netcom.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How you look depends on where you go. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------