Stairway to Advanced T-SQL

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.

Blogs

A New Word: los vidados

By

los vidados – n. the half-remembered acquaintances you knew years ago, who you might...

In-Person CISA Training – April 13-16, 2026

By

I will be leading an in-person Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) exam prep class...

EightKB 2026

By

EightKB is back again for 2026! The biggest online SQL Server internals conference is...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

query to track time spent on individual tasks in SSIS

By water490

Hi everyone I am looking at building a query to determine how much time...

SQL Server Transactional Replication from Always On Availability Groups to Azure SQL Database

By Terry Jago

Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Transactional Replication from...

Hidden Heroes

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Hidden Heroes

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

Identities and Sequences I

When thinking of the Identity property for auto incrementing columns and sequences for the same action, which are explicitly linked to increment a number in a table when a new row is added?

See possible answers