Recap
Cursors are not the recommended way to solve most data access or update problems, and they can cause serious performance headaches when used improperly. Your first thought (before using Transact-SQL) when contemplating how to solve a problem you have seen should be to align your code with the way SQL Server was designed to work—that is, to access data in sets if at all possible. Resort to using cursors only after you've explored as many set-based alternatives as possible.
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