Dynamic cursor in stored procedure

Question

I would like to use LIMIT in a cursor. The cursor should be used and updated several times within a loop, each time with different parameters of LIMIT. Here some code:

DELIMITER $$
CREATE PROCEDURE `updateIt`() READS SQL DATA
BEGIN

declare done int(1) default 0;
declare counter int(10) default 0;
declare xabc int(10) default 0;

declare tab1Cursor cursor for select abc from tab1 limit 100000*counter, 100000;
declare continue handler for not found set done=1;

loopCounter: LOOP
    set done = 0;
    open tab1Cursor;
    igmLoop: loop
        fetch tab1Cursor into xabc;
        if done = 1 then leave igmLoop; end if;
        -- do something
    end loop igmLoop;
    close tab1Cursor;

    if (counter = 1039) 
        leave loopCounter;
    end if;
    set counter = counter + 1;

END LOOP loopCounter;
END $$
DELIMITER ;

This, however, does not work (I also tried it with the cursor in the LOOP counterLoop). Can Mysql deal with dynamic cursors?

Answer 1

From the MySQL Manual

a cursor cannot be used for a dynamic statement that is prepared and executed with PREPARE and EXECUTE. The statement for a cursor is checked at cursor creation time, so the statement cannot be dynamic.

However there are 2 ways, according to this post in mysql forums:

The first is for cases where absolutely only one user at a time will be running the procedure. A prepare statement can be used to create a view with the dynamic SQL and the cursor can select from this statically-named view. There's almost no performance impact. Unfortunately, these views are also visible to other users (there's no such thing as a temporary view), so this won't work for multiple users.

Analogously, a temporary table can be created in the prepare statement and the cursor can select from the temporary table. Only the current session can see a temporary table, so the multiple user issue is resolved. But this solution can have significant performance impact since a temp table has to be created each time the proc runs.

Bottom line: We still need cursors to be able to be created dynamically!

Here's an example of using a view to pass the table name and column name into a cursor.

DELIMITER // 
DROP PROCEDURE IF EXISTS test_prepare// 

CREATE PROCEDURE test_prepare(IN tablename varchar(255), columnname varchar(50)) 
BEGIN 
DECLARE cursor_end CONDITION FOR SQLSTATE '02000'; 
DECLARE v_column_val VARCHAR(50); 
DECLARE done INT DEFAULT 0; 
DECLARE cur_table CURSOR FOR SELECT * FROM test_prepare_vw; 
DECLARE CONTINUE HANDLER FOR cursor_end SET done = 1; 

SET @query = CONCAT('CREATE VIEW test_prepare_vw as select ', columnname, ' from ', tablename); 
select @query; 
PREPARE stmt from @query; 
EXECUTE stmt; 
DEALLOCATE PREPARE stmt; 

OPEN cur_table; 
FETCH cur_table INTO v_column_val; 
WHILE done = 0 DO 
SELECT v_column_val; 
FETCH cur_table INTO v_column_val; 
END WHILE; 
CLOSE cur_table; 

DROP VIEW test_prepare_vw; 

END; 
// 

DELIMITER ;