Using Cursors
A database cursor is similar to the cursor on a word processor screen. As you press the Down Arrow key, the cursor scrolls down through the text one line at a time. Pressing the Up Arrow key scrolls your cursor up one line at a time. Pressing other keys such as Page Up and Page Down results in a leap of several lines in either direction. Database cursors operate in the same way.
Database cursors enable you to select a group of data, scroll through the group of records (often called a recordset), and examine each individual line of data as the cursor points to it. You can use a combination of local variables and a cursor to individually examine each record and perform any external operations needed before moving on to the next record. ...
Get Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 21 Days, Fourth Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.