Stairway to Advanced T-SQL Level 4: Record Level Processing Using Transact-SQL Cursors
Using a CURSOR is not normally the best way to process through a set of records. Yet when a seasoned programmer moves to writing TSQL for the first time they frequently look for ways to process a sets of records one row at a time. They do this because they are not used to thinking about processing records as a set. In order to process through a TSQL record set a row at a time you can use a cursor. A cursor is a record set that is defined with the DECLARE CURSOR statement. Cursors can be defined as either read-only or updatable. In this article I will introduce you to using cursors to do record level processing one row at a time.
