Re: cursors outside transactions

Dave Cramer <Dave@micro-automation.net> writes:
> On Tue, 2003-03-18 at 19:00, Hiroshi Inoue wrote:
>> ODBC(maybe JDBC also) has cross-transaction result sets
>> (rather than cursors) since long by simply holding all
>> results for a query at client side.

> JDBC is running into problems with this. Large queries cause out of
> memory exceptions.

Cursors implemented as Neil suggests would cause out-of-disk exceptions.
The limit is presumably further away than out-of-memory, but not any the
less real.  I'm concerned about this because, in my mind, one of the
principal uses of cursors is to deal with too-huge-to-materialize result
sets.

Still, given that we have no prospect of a "real" solution any time
soon, a limited solution might be a reasonable thing to offer for now.
        regards, tom lane