25008ERRORTier 2 — Caution✅ HIGH confidence

held cursor requires same isolation level

Category: Invalid Transaction StateVersions: All Postgres versions

What this means

SQLSTATE 25008 is raised when a held cursor (declared WITH HOLD) is accessed in a transaction with a different isolation level than the one in which the cursor was created.

Why it happens

1Opening a WITH HOLD cursor in one transaction isolation level and then accessing it from a new transaction with a different isolation level

How to reproduce

WITH HOLD cursor accessed at different isolation level.

trigger — this will ERROR

ERROR: held cursor requires same isolation level

Fix 1: Use the same isolation level in all transactions that access a held cursor

When using WITH HOLD cursors across transaction boundaries.

fix

SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL READ COMMITTED; -- match the cursor's level

Why this works

Ensure the transaction isolation level matches the level at which the cursor was created before accessing it.

Sources

📚 Official docs: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/errcodes-appendix.html

🔧 Source ref: Class 25 — Invalid Transaction State

Confidence assessment

✅ HIGH confidence

Standard SQLSTATE. Rarely encountered in practice.