Clarification reqeusted for "select * from a huge table"

Hi,
I had a chance to test one of the real world cases with Oracle and
PostgreSQL. Create a Table with 10 million rows (i worked on a 1GB RAM
machine) both in oracle and Postgresql. Just write a JDBC program for
a 'select *' on that table. With PostgreSQL as backend, java crashes
saying that it has met 'Out Of Memory'. With Oracle it doesn't.
Postgres tried to send all the results back to the client at one
shot, whereas in Oracle it works like a Cursor. Is this issue already
well known among hackers community? If known, why is it designed this
way?

I also noticed that it doesn't crash with psql, but it takes a
long time to show the first set of records. It takes a long time, even
to quit after i pressed 'q'.
With oracle SQLPlus, it is quite instantaneous.

--
Thanks,
Gokul.
CertoSQL Project,
Allied Solution Group.
(www.alliedgroups.com)