In one embodiment, a cursor management process inserts temporal references into a plurality of records written to a table of a shared database, the temporal references indicative of an order in which the records are written. A table write cursor points at a last-written record from among the plurality of records, and read cursors point to a last-read record of a corresponding application. The cursor management process may then provide, table updates to a particular application by determining a chain of one or more updated records of the table from the last-read record of the particular application to the last-written record based on walking a particular read cursor for the particular application through the temporal references of the one or more updated records until the particular read cursor points to the last-written record according to the table write cursor.