Select and Cursor doubt

Question

Dear All,
I got a doubt b/n select and cursor.
I read in one oracle book that select into clause will actually tries to get the data twice, Whereas the cursor will query only ones.
Is this the case in Oracle 10g or both the select and cursor will fetch the data only ones.
Ex
select sal into v_sal from emp where empno = 7788 --> Ones it hit the data, oracle will again scan the entire set of records in the emp table for another match.
Whereas
Cursor c_sal is select sal from emp where empno = 7788; --> This will do the fetch operation only ones.
Is this the case still True in Oracle 10g or 11i.
Appreciate your help.
Thankyou very much
Madhu K

Answer 1

the query is processed as follows (this is from ora doc)
Parse:
– Search for identical statement
– Check syntax, object names, and privileges
– Lock objects used during parse
– Create and store execution plan
Execute: Identify rows selected
Fetch: Return rows to user process
for cursor also same things are performed, but cursor is private sql area in which you can processes one row at a time, you can use cursor in your pl/sql program and access one row a time,
so if you say,
cursor c1 is select * from emp;
c1 is private sql area where you can processes single row of emp , make comparisons, calculations etc,
once you close the cursor this area is released and can be used by another cursor,
the basic query processing rules remains the same,