A static cursor is one in which the result set appears to be static. It does not usually detect changes made to the membership, order, or values of the result set after the cursor is opened. For example, suppose a static cursor fetches a row, and another application then updates that row. If the static cursor refetches the row, the values it sees are unchanged, despite the changes made by the other application.
Static cursors may detect their own updates, deletes, and inserts, although they are not required to do so. Whether a particular static cursor detects these changes is reported through the SQL_STATIC_SENSITIVITY option in SQLGetInfo. Static cursors never detect other updates, deletes, and inserts.
The row status array specified by the SQL_ATTR_ROW_STATUS_PTR statement attribute can contain SQL_ROW_SUCCESS, SQL_ROW_SUCCESS_WITH_INFO, or SQL_ROW_ERROR for any row. It returns SQL_ROW_UPDATED, SQL_ROW_DELETED, or SQL_ROW_ADDED for rows updated, deleted, or inserted by the cursor, assuming that the cursor is capable of detecting such changes.
Static cursors are commonly implemented by locking the rows in the result set or making a copy, or snapshot, of the result set. While locking rows is relatively easy to do, it has the drawback of significantly reducing concurrency. Making a copy allows greater concurrency and allows the cursor to keep track of its own updates, deletes, and inserts by modifying the copy. However, a copy is more expensive to make and can diverge from the underlying data as that data is changed by others.