PostgreSQL Development Essentials

Creating cursors

A cursor in PostgreSQL is a read-only pointer to a fully executed SELECT statement's result set. Cursors are typically used within applications that maintain a persistent connection to the PostgreSQL backend. By executing a cursor and maintaining a reference to its returned result set, an application can more efficiently manage which rows to retrieve from a result set at different times without re-executing the query with different LIMIT and OFFSET clauses.

The four SQL commands involved with PostgreSQL cursors are DECLARE, FETCH, MOVE, and CLOSE.

The DECLARE command both defines and opens a cursor, in effect defining the cursor in memory, and then populates the cursor with information about the result set returned from the executed ...