Re: Server Side Cursors

On Tue, 18 May 2004 12:46:32 -0500, "Joe" <heltibrand_at_NO_SPAMkarpel.com> wrote:

>Hi All
>
> I was just reading Patel's post from 5-14.
>
> I'm one of two Forms developers in company of .net / SQL Server
>developers. Boss man has a hard time understanding why the SQL Server guys
>and gals can't populate a grid (or whatever they call it in Microschlock
>land) with x records at a time. He asks why my Forms apps can serve up 15
>rows at a time based on user requests (page down) without having to wait for
>the entire result set to fill a data set (or whatever...). All I can tell
>him is "that's just the way it works!"
>
> Does anyone have an explanation of how Forms (or is it the database?)
>accomplishes this?
>
>Thanks
>

Oracle has a mechanism called 'array fetching'. You don't fetch record for record, you don't fetch all records at a time, but you fetch (configurable) say 15 records at a time. There is a specific call in the Oracle Call Interface to fetch n records, to fetch all records you simply repeatedly issue that call until it returns the -1403 'No data found' status. Forms simply has the user issue each call by pressing a button to fetch the next n records.

--
Sybrand Bakker, Senior Oracle DBA