metawizard2,

now that you explained your background, I can understand better why you chose the way you described... and I'm glad you started to explore the set-based approach. If you'll work with SQL Server, you will find it opens lots of possibilities how to manage data efficiently. As long as you work with a few thousand rows, the difference is not crucial - but once you have tables with hundreds of thousands or millions of rows, row-by-row processing is absolute disaster. Converting a procedure to set-based logic can cut the execution time to a small fraction of the original time (like from several hours to a few minutes).

Good luck in your learning process, I'm sure you'll find almost everything you need on this site - and if you miss or don't understand something, just post your question and we will be happy to assist you! Looking forward to your articles and posts,

Vladan