How to do positioned updates?

Question

I have a SELECT statement that I am browsing one row at a time
with FetchNext command.
How do I update that row of data that I am currently looking at?
Is the UPDATE statement with ROWID parameter the only command
available to me?
Can't I use the same statement & cursor that I am using for
browsing the data for updating as well? This would seem more
efficient way.
Any experience with updates?

Answer 1

Good Question.
Even if you are using the ROWID how do you get it without having
to explicitly specifying it in the Select clause ? You could
use "SELECT ... FOR UPDATE" but this locks every row fetched.
If the table you are "selecting" has a primary key or unique
index you could use those fields to do the update but just like
the ROWID, they must be explicitly selected. You can get the
primary / index fields using the all_indexes and all_ind_columns
views.
I'd be interested if you find any solution to this.
This sort of functionality is available if you use Oracle
Objects for OLE. But how is it done ??
Hope you find an answer.
Adrian