Sean Lange (8/12/2011)
I think the more important question is how can you eliminate your cursor and therefore not really care about some of the subtle details. 😛Honestly cursors are one the most resource intensive (and SLOW) methods of data manipulation available in sql server. There are a few very rare cases where a cursor is the only way to accomplish something. For everything else there is a much faster set based way of handling things.
If you really want to know the details about your question it can be answered here.
I agree with you about 99%. There are situations where I HAVE to use a cursor, especially when producing a result set that has to be passed through a stored procedure call. Keep in mind this is done as a one-off data manipulation process and not used in mainstream production transaction processing. It is certainly easier than having to strip out the code from the sproc and put it into the remaining logic. Yes, in the long run it'd be faster but for a one-off, it isn't worth the extra time and effort
I have found CTEs & the MERGE constructs to be quite handy....
Kurt
Kurt W. Zimmerman
SR DBA
Lefrak Organization
New York, NY
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwzimmerman