Cursors and Transactions, why?

[Eric Ridge <ebr@tcdi.com>]

Why must a cursor be defined in an open transaction?  Obviously there's 
a good reason, but I can't figure it out.  On a high level, what would 
be involved in allowing a cursor to outlive the transaction that 
created it?

Cursors seem as if they have some nice performance benefits (esp. if 
you're not using all rows found), but their usefulness drops 
considerably since you must leave a transaction open.

eric


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