Using a Cursor to Read Data In the normal SELECT statement, the data from the selection is always read

direc tly into the target area specified in the INTO clause during the SELECT statemen t. When you use a cursor to read data, you decouple the process from the SELECT statement. To do this, you must open a cursor for a SELECT statement. Afterwards , you can place the lines from the selection into a flat target area. Opening and Closing Cursors To open a cursor for a SELECT statement, use the following: OPEN CURSOR [WITH HOLD] <c> FOR SELECT FROM [WHERE [GROUP BY [HAVING [ORDER BY <result> <source> <condition>] <fields>] <cond>] <fields>].

You must first have declared the cursor <c> using the DATA statement and the spe cial data type CURSOR. You can use all clauses of the SELECT statement apart fro m the INTO clause. Furthermore, you can only formulate the SELECT clause so that the selection consists of more than one line. This means that you may not use t he SINGLE addition, and that the column selection may not contain only aggregate expressions. An open cursor points to an internal handler, similarly to a reference variable pointing to an object. You can reassign cursors so that more than one points to the same handler. In a MOVE statement, the target cursor adopts all of the attri butes of the source cursor, namely its position, and all of the clauses in the O PEN CURSOR statement. You can also open more than one cursor in parallel for a single database table. If a cursor is already open, you cannot reopen it. To close a cursor explicitly, use the following statement: CLOSE CURSOR <c>. You should use this statement to close all cursors that you no longer require, s ince only a limited number of cursors may be open simultaneously. With one excep tion, a database LUW is concluded when you close a cursor either explicitly or i mplicitly. The WITH HOLD addition in the OPEN CURSOR statement allows you to pre vent a cursor from being closed when a database commit occurs in Native SQL. Reading Data An open cursor is linked to a multiple-line selection in the database table. To read the data into a target area in the ABAP program, use the following: FETCH NEXT CURSOR <c> INTO <target>. This writes one line of the selection into the target area <target>, and the cur sor moves one line further in the selection set. The fetch statement decouples t he INTO clause from the other clauses in the SELECT statement. All the INTO clau ses of the SELECT statement can be used. The statement reads the lines that are needed to fill the target area of the INTO clause and moves the cursor to the ne xt line to be read. SY-SUBRC is set to 0 until all the lines of the selection have been read; otherw ise it is 4. After a FETCH statement, system field SY-DBCNT contains the number

of all the lines read so far for the corresponding cursor.

REPORT demo_select_cursor_1. DATA: c1 TYPE cursor, c2 TYPE cursor. DATA: wa1 TYPE spfli, wa2 TYPE spfli. DATA: flag1(1) TYPE c, flag2(1) TYPE c. OPEN CURSOR: c1 FOR SELECT carrid connid FROM spfli WHERE carrid = 'LH', c2 FOR SELECT carrid connid cityfrom cityto FROM spfli WHERE carrid = 'AZ'. DO. IF flag1 NE 'X'. FETCH NEXT CURSOR c1 INTO CORRESPONDING FIELDS OF wa1. IF sy-subrc <> 0. CLOSE CURSOR c1. flag1 = 'X'. ELSE. WRITE: / wa1-carrid, wa1-connid. ENDIF. ENDIF. IF flag2 NE 'X'. FETCH NEXT CURSOR c2 INTO CORRESPONDING FIELDS OF wa2. IF sy-subrc <> 0. CLOSE CURSOR c2. flag2 = 'X'. ELSE. WRITE: / wa2-carrid, wa2-connid, wa2-cityfrom, wa2-cityto. ENDIF. ENDIF. IF flag1 = 'X' AND flag2 = 'X'. EXIT. ENDIF. ENDDO. The output looks something like this:

The database table SPFLI is read using two cursors, each with different conditio ns.. The selected lines are read alternately in a DO loop.

REPORT demo_select_cursor_2. DATA c TYPE cursor.

DATA wa TYPE sbook. OPEN CURSOR c FOR SELECT carrid connid fldate bookid smoker FROM sbook ORDER BY carrid connid fldate smoker bookid. FETCH NEXT CURSOR c INTO CORRESPONDING FIELDS OF wa. WHILE sy-subrc = 0. IF wa-smoker = ' '. PERFORM nonsmoker USING c. ELSEIF wa-smoker = 'X'. PERFORM smoker USING c. SKIP. ELSE. EXIT. ENDIF. ENDWHILE. FORM nonsmoker USING n_cur TYPE cursor. WHILE wa-smoker = ' ' AND sy-subrc = 0. FORMAT COLOR = 5. WRITE: / wa-carrid, wa-connid, wa-fldate, wa-bookid. FETCH NEXT CURSOR n_cur INTO CORRESPONDING FIELDS OF wa. ENDWHILE. ENDFORM. FORM smoker USING s_cur TYPE cursor. WHILE wa-smoker = 'X' AND sy-subrc = 0. FORMAT COLOR = 6. WRITE: / wa-carrid, wa-connid, wa-fldate, wa-bookid. FETCH NEXT CURSOR s_cur INTO CORRESPONDING FIELDS OF wa. ENDWHILE. ENDFORM. The following is an extract from the list display:

The program opens a cursor for the database table SBOOK. After the first FETCH s tatement, a subroutine is called, which is dependent on the contents of the SMOK ER column. The cursor is passed to an interface parameter in the subroutine. The subroutines read further lines until the contents of the SMOKER column change. The subroutines perform different tasks using the lines read by the cursor.

REPORT demo_select_cursor_3. DATA: wa_spfli TYPE spfli, wa_sflight TYPE sflight, wa_sflight_back TYPE sflight. DATA: c1 TYPE cursor, c2 TYPE cursor. OPEN CURSOR c1 FOR SELECT * FROM spfli ORDER BY PRIMARY KEY.

OPEN CURSOR c2 FOR SELECT * FROM sflight ORDER BY PRIMARY KEY. DO. FETCH NEXT CURSOR c1 INTO wa_spfli. IF sy-subrc NE 0. EXIT. ENDIF. WRITE: / wa_spfli-carrid, wa_spfli-connid. DO. IF NOT wa_sflight_back IS INITIAL. wa_sflight = wa_sflight_back. CLEAR wa_sflight_back. ELSE. FETCH NEXT CURSOR c2 INTO wa_sflight. IF sy-subrc <> 0. EXIT. ELSEIF wa_sflight-carrid <> wa_spfli-carrid OR wa_sflight-connid <> wa_spfli-connid. wa_sflight_back = wa_sflight. EXIT. ENDIF. ENDIF. WRITE: / wa_sflight-carrid, wa_sflight-connid, wa_sflight-fldate. ENDDO. ENDDO. The output is as follows:

The program opens a cursor for each of the table SPFLI and SFLIGHT. Since both t ables are linked by a foreign key relationship, it is possible to program a nest ed loop by sorting the selection by its primary key, so that the data read in th e inner loop depends on the data in the outer loop. This programming method is q uicker than using nested SELECT statements, since the cursor for the inner loop does not continually have to be reopened. If the group level in the inner loop i s changed, the data that is read is stored temporarily until the next loop pass since it is not possible to reset the cursor.