Cursor (databases) - "WITH HOLD"

"WITH HOLD"

Cursors are usually closed automatically at the end of a transaction, i.e. when a COMMIT or ROLLBACK (or an implicit termination of the transaction) occurs. That behavior can be changed if the cursor is declared using the WITH HOLD clause. (The default is WITHOUT HOLD.) A holdable cursor is kept open over COMMIT and closed upon ROLLBACK. (Some DBMS deviate from this standard behavior and also keep holdable cursors open over ROLLBACK.)

When a COMMIT occurs, a holdable cursor is positioned before the next row. Thus, a positioned UPDATE or positioned DELETE statement will only succeed after a FETCH operation occurred first in the transaction.

Note that JDBC defines cursors as holdable per default. This is done because JDBC also activates auto-commit per default. Due to the usual overhead associated with auto-commit and holdable cursors, both features should be explicitly deactivated at the connection level.