previously I fetching statecode rows from zipcode tables which contains about 45k rows due to that also cursor was taking too much time so i replaced with state table and fetch statecode from statetable which has about 100 rows and there is great improvement in performance..

DECLARE @fcIty varchar(40)

DECLARE @fstate varchar(20)

declare db_cursor cursor for select StateCode from StateMaster

open db_cursor

fetch next from db_cursor into @fstate

while @@FETCH_STATUS=0

begin

UPDATE C

SET C.STATEID =S.STATEID

FROM StateMaster S

INNER JOIN

WCDentalSQL_TOR..ZipCode Z ON Z.fState COLLATE Latin1_General_CI_AI = S.StateCode COLLATE Latin1_General_CI_AI

INNER JOIN

CityMaster C ON C.CityName COLLATE Latin1_General_CI_AI = Z.fCity COLLATE Latin1_General_CI_AI

WHERE Z.fState=@fstate

fetch next from db_cursor into @fstate

end

close db_cursor

deallocate db_cursor

but yes always try to minimize the use of cursor so will use Chris query... :-):-P