I'm a bit puzzled by this article. Surely, in order to illustrate the dangers of using cursors or 'WHILE' loops, you would expect to see an example where there is an obvious performance or resource advantage in avoiding cursors. This routine is so trivial that it could be, and has been, written any number of ways without affecting its execution time at all. The trick, surely, is to take a problem that seems impossible to do without cursors and show how easy it actually is. Give the performance figures for a whole range of data sizes etc.

I'm perfectly happy to use WHILE loops for a job like the one described in this article, especially if it makes the routine more understandable. Am I wrong to do so?