Re: update statement PL/SQL

Paul wrote:
> Sorry, I may be confused here - am trying to learn PL/SQL. The book
> Learning Oracle PL/SQL by Bill Pribyl with Steven Feuerstein makes use
> of cursors - what's so bad about them?
In a nutshell a cursor is an API that connects the relation model of SQL with the procedural model. Whenever you cross models there's an impedance mismatch.
Statistically developers learn procedural concepts first (VB, C, Java, ..) and have a hard time internalizing relational concepts, so they tend to code procedural.
However RDBMS shine in relational optimization and execution. So using an excess of procedural code (resulting in many cursors) is an indicator for bad exploitation of the RDBMS.

And of course SQL Developers are like drivers: Two out of three believe they are above average.

Cheers
Serge

-- 
Serge Rielau
DB2 SQL Compiler Development
IBM Toronto Lab