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	id AA06669; Wed, 27 May 92 15:49:41 -0700
Date: Wed, 27 May 92 15:49:41 -0700
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From: "Patrick M. Landry" <pml@cacs.usl.edu>
Subject: portal behavior question
To: postgres@postgres.berkeley.edu
Sender: pg_adm@postgres.berkeley.edu

I am writing a GUI postgres database browser.
In order to implement the "next" and "previous" browsing functions
I currently do sonething like
	begin
	retrieve portal foo (TABLE.all) 
	end
Then for a next I do
	fetch forward 1 in foo
and for previous I do
	fetch backward 1 in foo

This all works fine. I was surprised (and glad) to find out that
if a tuple is added to the TABLE after I perform the retrive the 
portal is somehow updated and a subsequent fetch will retrive the
newly added tuple. (hope that is clear)

My question is whether or not I can depend on this behavior. 
I am also curios as to why this works. Is the retrieve executed
every time I do a fetch?
--
patrick
pml@cacs.usl.edu