• If this is a one-off you could do:

    UPDATE issues

    SET category = (SELECT MIN (k.category)

    FROM keywords k

    WHERE i.description LIKE '%' + k.keyword + '%')

    FROM keywords k

    I will be really slow.

    If you need to do this on a regular basis, you need to consider full-text indexing.

    [font="Times New Roman"]Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, www.sommarskog.se[/font]