Writing Stored Procedures for Microsoft SQL Server

Looping Structures

Many times within an application, you will need to loop. Looping is the process of repeating a certain section of code until a specific criteria is met. SQL Server can loop. There are only two real looping structures within SQL Server and they are extremely similar. One is a loop using a WHILE statement and the other is a loop that utilizes a GOTO statement. Of course, as anyone who has ever taken a programming class can tell you WHILE is the preferred method; you should try to avoid using GOTO because it can create code that's extremely difficult to read.

WHILE Loop

The WHILE loop is a loop in which you check the criteria before the statement executes. All you have to do is specify the WHILE keyword, the criteria you ...