Re: libpqxx: Cursors needed??!

On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 10:51:22PM +0000, Key88 SF wrote:
>
> It's not clear to me when to use the Cursor class, if at all. Transactions
> seem to execute fine and I get valid Result classes back without using
> cursors.

There's no special reason why you should use Cursor to retrieve
results--you can always just call TransactionItf::Exec() and get
Results from that. Use Cursor only when you want to create an
SQL cursor.

> Many of the sample programs don't use them either.

The sample programs were mostly written in the order in which they're
numbered, so some of them predate cursors.

> Are cursors needed at all??

No. It's a convenience class; you can always just execute the
cursor-related commands by hand. The wrapper class just gives you
conveniences like additional compiler checking, more specific error
messages, more user-friendly syntax, and absolute positioning. The
latter may be a little harder to do for yourself than it seems,
because of the way postgres returns tuple counts when moving or
fetching with a cursor.

Jeroen