A method and system for implementing scrollable cursors is described. A multi-tier caching structure is maintained, in which a partial result set is cached at the client computer and a more-complete result set is cached at the server computer. If the cursor is scrolled in either the forward or backward directions, the partial result set cached at the client computer is first checked to see if requested data is present. If so, then the requested data is fetched from the client cache and the current position of the cursor is moved to the appropriate position in the result set. If the requested data is not present in the client cache, then those data items are fetched from the cache at the server computer.