Chapter 14. Cursors

I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous—if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.

—Robert Green Ingersoll^[1]

^[1] Ingersoll, Robert Green. “The Ghosts.” In Best of Robert Ingersoll: Selections from His Writings and Speeches, ed. Roger E. Greeley. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1983, p. 34.

In this chapter, we'll update the coverage of cursors that first appeared in my book The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL. We'll continue the discussion begun in that book regarding cursors and how to use them in SQL Server applications, and we'll update the information to cover the current release of the product.