Re: are cursors necessary?

On Thursday 04 December 2003 22:46, Mark Harrison wrote:
> res = PQexec(conn, "BEGIN");
> res = PQexec(conn, "DECLARE myportal CURSOR FOR select * from
> pg_database"); res = PQexec(conn, "FETCH ALL in myportal");
> res = PQexec(conn, "CLOSE myportal");
> res = PQexec(conn, "END");

> Is there any value in my own query-only programs to declaring the cursor
> for each search?

Well - if you want to scroll forward/backward through the resultset, you'd
want a cursor. Or, if your client had limited memory and the resultset was
large you might want to do so. PG will return all rows at once, so if your
SELECT returns 5 million rows you'll use a lot of RAM on the client side.

--
Richard Huxton
Archonet Ltd