(The comments are to the author of the article)

Have you tried to convert the cursor to a static cursor?

Because, in my opinion, that's what you are doing with a temporary table (defining the result set "A priori"). I have seen great improvements with this simple modification DECLARE curs_name CURSOR to DECLARE curs_name CURSOR STATIC (assuming you can ignore the modifications to the original result set).

I always try to achieve a set based solution, but if you are only trying to speedup that operation, with the least amount of change, sometimes it pays to play with the cursor options. Of course, with a temporary table, you can more easily migrate to a set based solution.

More problematic (at least, finding an elegant situation) is to use set operations when the tables use an identity column (especially using the identity of one table as the foreign key of another table).

Best regards,

André Cardoso