The -Dsrv MSS_PRESERVE_CURS,1 startup option allows server side cursors in Microsoft SQL Server to be preserved beyond a transaction boundary. Under many circumstances, preserved cursors can result in a significant performance improvement. Enabling this feature can result in enhanced performance, but performance gains are not guaranteed and in limited circumstances performance degrades. For this reason, this option is disabled by default. To test if preserve cursors benefit your application, enable this option by toggling the switch on with -Dsrv MSS_PRESERVE_CURS,1.