Implicit vs Explicit cursors re-visited

According to some after-market documentation I have read.. ALWAYS USE EXPLICIT cursors..(PL/SQL) this implies that

(psuedo-code)
cursor c1 is select * from A
open c1;
for x in c1
insert into B x.1 x.2 etc.,

is preferable to the much more simple

insert into B select * from A; (that's it.. one line)...

The reason sited is that memory for the cursor is not closed for an implicit cursor..(until?)

Can anyone elaborate?
Some preliminary benchmarks indicate that method 2 (implicit) seems to be a bit faster... could this be misleading? or is there another trade off I'm missing?

This is Oracle 8.1.5 (certainly could be upgraded) on AIX 4.3.3

Thanks.. Received on Wed Jan 17 2001 - 22:36:32 CST