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Databases Intermediate

What is Cursor?

A database object that enables row-by-row processing of query results, useful for operations that cannot be done in bulk.

Cursors provide a way to iterate over query results one row at a time, rather than fetching everything at once. They are useful when processing each row requires complex logic or when result sets are too large for memory.

However, cursors are generally slower than set-based operations. Most SQL operations should use standard SELECT/UPDATE/DELETE statements. Cursors are mainly useful in stored procedures and migration scripts that need row-level processing.

Related Terms

Vacuum
A PostgreSQL maintenance operation that reclaims storage from dead tuples and updates statistics for the query planner.
Database Connection Pooling
A technique that maintains a cache of database connections for reuse, reducing the overhead of creating new connections.
Elastic Search
A distributed search and analytics engine built on Apache Lucene, optimized for full-text search and log analysis.
EXPLAIN ANALYZE
A PostgreSQL command that shows the execution plan of a query along with actual runtime statistics for performance tuning.
Database Index Types
Different index structures (B-tree, Hash, GIN, GiST, BRIN) optimized for various query patterns and data types.
B-Tree Index
The default index type in most databases that organizes data in a balanced tree structure for efficient searching, sorting, and range queries.
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