Specifying the HOLD option when you open a cursor keeps the cursor open past the end of the transaction, if the transaction ends in a COMMIT.
A hold cursor does not remain open across a ROLLBACK in which a cursor is opened.
In Sybase IQ, hold cursors are updatable until they are committed. After the commit, the hold cursor is marked internally as READ ONLY and subsequent positioned updates generate an error.
Although the HOLD option is not commonly used in a DSS environment, with long transactions, it may prove useful in some situations. For example, many existing applications expect to use hold cursors, and some ODBC drivers use hold cursors by default.
Sybase IQ provides the version management needed for hold cursors.
Hold cursors do impact performance. All resources used by the cursor, including memory, disk space, and process threads, are held until the cursor is closed.