If you have previous experience with Indexed Sequential Access Method (ISAM) files, you know it is common for applications to open an ISAM file and process each record one by one to the end of the file. Because the ISAM engine performs only the most basic data access operations, your application assumes the role of creating and using internal "pseudo result set" data structures.
By contrast, relational databases and cursors easily provide query result sets, but bring a new set of problems to solve: shared data concurrency and cursor resource management.
The following sections acquaint you with important cursor management techniques you can implement in your enterprise application.
| Section | Description |
| Managing Concurrency With Cursor Locks | Describes how cursor locks help maintain database consistency in multiuser environments. |
| Client-Side Cursors versus Server-Side Cursors | Discusses how cursor resources can be located on both the client and server side. |