Cursor values

A cursor value is used to represent a reference to an underlying cursor.

The CURSOR type is a built-in data type that can only be used as the data type of:

A local variable in a compound SQL (compiled) statement
A parameter of an SQL routine
The returns type of an SQL function
A global variable

A variable or parameter defined with the CURSOR type can only be used in compound SQL (compiled) statements.

A cursor variable is an SQL variable, SQL parameter, or global variable of a cursor type. A cursor variable is said to have an underlying cursor that corresponds to the cursor created for a SELECT statement and assigned to that variable. More than one cursor variable may share the same underlying cursor.

Cursor variables can be used the same way as conventional SQL cursors to iterate through a result set of a SELECT statement with OPEN, FETCH, and CLOSE statements.