SQL for MySQL Developers: A Comprehensive Tutorial and Reference

Chapter 16. The HANDLER Statement

16.1 Introduction

So far, we have discussed only the SELECT statement for querying table data. Typical of this statement is that it always returns a set of rows. The statement is representative of the declarative character of the SQL language.

MySQL supports an additional statement to retrieve data: the HANDLER statement. This statement enables us to browse the data of a table row by row. For some applications, this statement is more suitable than the SELECT statement, such as for applications in which the data of a table is always processed row by row.

However, the HANDLER statement does not have all the features of the SELECT statement. In addition, the HANDLER statement has not been included in the SQL standard; ...