Cost Comparison on Cursor Location

Client-Side Cursors

Client-side cursors have the following cost benefits compared to server-side cursors:

Higher scalability:
Faster scrolling:
Highly portable:

Client-side cursors have the following cost overhead or drawbacks:
Higher pressure on client resources:
Support for limited cursor types:
Only one active cursor-based statement on one connection



Server-Side Cursors
Server-side cursors have the following cost benefits:

Multiple active cursor-based statements on one connection:
Row processing near the data:
Less pressure on client resources:
Support for all cursor types:

Server-side cursors have the following cost overhead or disadvantages:

Lower scalability:
More network round-trips: