Android Cursor Interface

An Android Cursor provides read-write access to a data set from an SQL Database.  The Android Cursor interface is a bit of a naming paradigm misdirection.  We normally think of a cursor as an indicator on our computer screen as to where we can type.  And we usually think of the cursor as primarily moving horizontally. he Android Cursor is more complex than this and its cursor movement is primarily vertical, indicating rows in a matrix.  You can think of a Cursor as providing access to an array of data.

The chart below from the video training course Learning Android App Programming provides some convenient visual cues to help understand and remember Android Cursor functionality.