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DECLARE(7)                         PostgreSQL 14.23 Documentation                         DECLARE(7)



NAME
       DECLARE - define a cursor

SYNOPSIS
       DECLARE name [ BINARY ] [ ASENSITIVE | INSENSITIVE ] [ [ NO ] SCROLL ]
           CURSOR [ { WITH | WITHOUT } HOLD ] FOR query

DESCRIPTION
       DECLARE allows a user to create cursors, which can be used to retrieve a small number of rows
       at a time out of a larger query. After the cursor is created, rows are fetched from it using
       FETCH.

           Note
           This page describes usage of cursors at the SQL command level. If you are trying to use
           cursors inside a PL/pgSQL function, the rules are different — see Section 43.7.

PARAMETERS
       name
           The name of the cursor to be created.

       BINARY
           Causes the cursor to return data in binary rather than in text format.

       ASENSITIVE
       INSENSITIVE
           Cursor sensitivity determines whether changes to the data underlying the cursor, done in
           the same transaction, after the cursor has been declared, are visible in the cursor.
           INSENSITIVE means they are not visible, ASENSITIVE means the behavior is
           implementation-dependent. A third behavior, SENSITIVE, meaning that such changes are
           visible in the cursor, is not available in PostgreSQL. In PostgreSQL, all cursors are
           insensitive; so these key words have no effect and are only accepted for compatibility
           with the SQL standard.

           Specifying INSENSITIVE together with FOR UPDATE or FOR SHARE is an error.

       SCROLL
       NO SCROLL
           SCROLL specifies that the cursor can be used to retrieve rows in a nonsequential fashion
           (e.g., backward). Depending upon the complexity of the query's execution plan, specifying
           SCROLL might impose a performance penalty on the query's execution time.  NO SCROLL
           specifies that the cursor cannot be used to retrieve rows in a nonsequential fashion. The
           default is to allow scrolling in some cases; this is not the same as specifying SCROLL.
           See Notes below for details.

       WITH HOLD
       WITHOUT HOLD
           WITH HOLD specifies that the cursor can continue to be used after the transaction that
           created it successfully commits.  WITHOUT HOLD specifies that the cursor cannot be used
           outside of the transaction that created it. If neither WITHOUT HOLD nor WITH HOLD is
           specified, WITHOUT HOLD is the default.

       query
           A SELECT or VALUES command which will provide the rows to be returned by the cursor.

       The key words ASENSITIVE, BINARY, INSENSITIVE, and SCROLL can appear in any order.

NOTES
       Normal cursors return data in text format, the same as a SELECT would produce. The BINARY
       option specifies that the cursor should return data in binary format. This reduces conversion
       effort for both the server and client, at the cost of more programmer effort to deal with
       platform-dependent binary data formats. As an example, if a query returns a value of one from
       an integer column, you would get a string of 1 with a default cursor, whereas with a binary
       cursor you would get a 4-byte field containing the internal representation of the value (in
       big-endian byte order).

       Binary cursors should be used carefully. Many applications, including psql, are not prepared
       to handle binary cursors and expect data to come back in the text format.

           Note
           When the client application uses the “extended query” protocol to issue a FETCH command,
           the Bind protocol message specifies whether data is to be retrieved in text or binary
           format. This choice overrides the way that the cursor is defined. The concept of a binary
           cursor as such is thus obsolete when using extended query protocol — any cursor can be
           treated as either text or binary.

       Unless WITH HOLD is specified, the cursor created by this command can only be used within the
       current transaction. Thus, DECLARE without WITH HOLD is useless outside a transaction block:
       the cursor would survive only to the completion of the statement. Therefore PostgreSQL
       reports an error if such a command is used outside a transaction block. Use BEGIN and COMMIT
       (or ROLLBACK) to define a transaction block.

       If WITH HOLD is specified and the transaction that created the cursor successfully commits,
       the cursor can continue to be accessed by subsequent transactions in the same session. (But
       if the creating transaction is aborted, the cursor is removed.) A cursor created with WITH
       HOLD is closed when an explicit CLOSE command is issued on it, or the session ends. In the
       current implementation, the rows represented by a held cursor are copied into a temporary
       file or memory area so that they remain available for subsequent transactions.

       WITH HOLD may not be specified when the query includes FOR UPDATE or FOR SHARE.

       The SCROLL option should be specified when defining a cursor that will be used to fetch
       backwards. This is required by the SQL standard. However, for compatibility with earlier
       versions, PostgreSQL will allow backward fetches without SCROLL, if the cursor's query plan
       is simple enough that no extra overhead is needed to support it. However, application
       developers are advised not to rely on using backward fetches from a cursor that has not been
       created with SCROLL. If NO SCROLL is specified, then backward fetches are disallowed in any
       case.

       Backward fetches are also disallowed when the query includes FOR UPDATE or FOR SHARE;
       therefore SCROLL may not be specified in this case.

           Caution
           Scrollable cursors may give unexpected results if they invoke any volatile functions (see
           Section 38.7). When a previously fetched row is re-fetched, the functions might be
           re-executed, perhaps leading to results different from the first time. It's best to
           specify NO SCROLL for a query involving volatile functions. If that is not practical, one
           workaround is to declare the cursor SCROLL WITH HOLD and commit the transaction before
           reading any rows from it. This will force the entire output of the cursor to be
           materialized in temporary storage, so that volatile functions are executed exactly once
           for each row.

       If the cursor's query includes FOR UPDATE or FOR SHARE, then returned rows are locked at the
       time they are first fetched, in the same way as for a regular SELECT command with these
       options. In addition, the returned rows will be the most up-to-date versions.

           Caution
           It is generally recommended to use FOR UPDATE if the cursor is intended to be used with
           UPDATE ... WHERE CURRENT OF or DELETE ... WHERE CURRENT OF. Using FOR UPDATE prevents
           other sessions from changing the rows between the time they are fetched and the time they
           are updated. Without FOR UPDATE, a subsequent WHERE CURRENT OF command will have no
           effect if the row was changed since the cursor was created.

           Another reason to use FOR UPDATE is that without it, a subsequent WHERE CURRENT OF might
           fail if the cursor query does not meet the SQL standard's rules for being “simply
           updatable” (in particular, the cursor must reference just one table and not use grouping
           or ORDER BY). Cursors that are not simply updatable might work, or might not, depending
           on plan choice details; so in the worst case, an application might work in testing and
           then fail in production. If FOR UPDATE is specified, the cursor is guaranteed to be
           updatable.

           The main reason not to use FOR UPDATE with WHERE CURRENT OF is if you need the cursor to
           be scrollable, or to be isolated from concurrent updates (that is, continue to show the
           old data). If this is a requirement, pay close heed to the caveats shown above.

       The SQL standard only makes provisions for cursors in embedded SQL. The PostgreSQL server
       does not implement an OPEN statement for cursors; a cursor is considered to be open when it
       is declared. However, ECPG, the embedded SQL preprocessor for PostgreSQL, supports the
       standard SQL cursor conventions, including those involving DECLARE and OPEN statements.

       You can see all available cursors by querying the pg_cursors system view.

EXAMPLES
       To declare a cursor:

           DECLARE liahona CURSOR FOR SELECT * FROM films;

       See FETCH(7) for more examples of cursor usage.

COMPATIBILITY
       The SQL standard allows cursors only in embedded SQL and in modules.  PostgreSQL permits
       cursors to be used interactively.

       According to the SQL standard, changes made to insensitive cursors by UPDATE ... WHERE
       CURRENT OF and DELETE ... WHERE CURRENT OF statements are visible in that same cursor.
       PostgreSQL treats these statements like all other data changing statements in that they are
       not visible in insensitive cursors.

       Binary cursors are a PostgreSQL extension.

SEE ALSO
       CLOSE(7), FETCH(7), MOVE(7)



PostgreSQL 14.23                                2026                                      DECLARE(7)