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SQL Server FAQ - What Are Cursors

By: FYIcenter.com

(Continued from previous topic...)

What Are Cursors?

A cursor is a special data type that represents a result set returned by a SELECT query statement. There are several notes about cursor you need to remember:

• Cursor data type can not be used to define table columns.
• Cursor data type is used on store procedures, functions, and triggers to help you loop through result sets returned by queries.
• Cursor data type can be used to define cursor variables.
• There are special Transact-SQL statements dedicated to work with cursors variables: OPEN, FETCH, CLOSE, and DEALLOCATE.
• Cursor variables can be passed as procedure or function parameters.
• There is a special function, CURSOR_STATUS(), for check cursor statuses.

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1. What Are Cursors?
2. How To Declare a Cursor with "DECLARE ... CURSOR"?
3. How To Execute the Cursor Queries with "OPEN" Statements?
4. How To Fetch the Next Row from a Cursor with a "FETCH" Statement?
5. How To Transfer Data from a Cursor to Variables with a "FETCH" Statement?
6. How To Loop through the Result Set with @@FETCH_STATUS?
7. How To Declare and Use Cursor Variables?
8. How To Create a Scrollable Cursor with the SCROLL Option?
9. How To Create a Dynamic Cursor with the DYNAMIC Option?