The present paper argues that,in addition to the overt marker"shi"(使)widely used so far at home in Chinese translation of English causative sentences,the exploitation of the covert marker should be taken into consideration because of its concisely-formed,vividly-conveyed and richly-implied sentence structure,which has been more popularly enjoyed by Chinese people.

With the viewpoint of relevance theory,the paper discusses the pragmatic function of metaphorical discourse markers.

An introduction is given to the use of the cursor in Oracle and an example demonstrating the explicit and the implicit cursors is also provided.