swerWhat are the sequence of steps to be followed to handle user defined cursors?

To handle user-defined cursors in SQL, you can follow these steps:

1. Declaration of Cursor: First, you need to declare a cursor using the DECLARE keyword. The cursor is associated with a SELECT statement that retrieves the rows to be traversed by the cursor.

DECLARE cursor_name CURSOR FOR select_statement;

2. Opening of Cursor: After declaring a cursor, you need to open it. The OPEN statement initializes the result set of the cursor.

OPEN cursor_name;

3. Fetching Cursor: Once the cursor is opened, you can fetch the rows from the cursor one by one. The FETCH statement retrieves the next row pointed by the cursor and moves the cursor to the next row in the result set.

FETCH NEXT FROM cursor_name;

4. Closing Cursor: After fetching all rows, you need to close the cursor using the CLOSE statement. It releases the current result set of the cursor.

CLOSE cursor_name;

5. Deallocating Cursor: Finally, you need to deallocate the cursor to delete cursor definition and release all system resources associated with the cursor. It is done using the DEALLOCATE statement.

DEALLOCATE cursor_name;

Remember, the cursor must be declared in the declaration section of your PL/SQL block. It is a good practice to close and deallocate the cursor after use to free up system resources.