Cursors allow data to be searched, iterated and modified, implementing the CRUD (create, read, update and delete) operations. Cursors are opened in the context of a session. If a transaction is started, cursors operate in the context of the transaction until the transaction is resolved.
Raw data is represented by key/value pairs of WT_ITEM structures, but cursors can also provide access to fields within the key and value if the formats are described in the WT_SESSION::create method.
In the common case, a cursor is used to access records in a table. However, cursors can be used on subsets of tables (such as a single column or a projection of multiple columns), as an interface to statistics, configuration data or application-specific data sources. See WT_SESSION::open_cursor for more information.
Thread safety: A WT_CURSOR handle is not usually shared between threads. See Multithreading for more information.
All data operations are performed in the context of a WT_SESSION.
This encapsulates the thread and transactional context of the operation.
Thread safety: A WT_SESSION handle is not usually shared between threads, see Multithreading for more information.