SQL Server 2017 Query Performance Tuning: Troubleshoot and Optimize Query Performance

© Grant Fritchey 2018

Grant FritcheySQL Server 2017 Query Performance Tuninghttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3888-2_23

23. Row-by-Row Processing

Grant Fritchey¹ 

(1)

Grafton, Massachusetts, USA

 

It is common to find database applications that use cursors to process one row at a time. Developers tend to think about processing data in a row-by-row fashion. Oracle even uses something called cursors as a high-speed data access mechanism. Cursors in SQL Server are different. Because data manipulation through a cursor in SQL Server incurs significant additional overhead, database applications should avoid using cursors. T-SQL and SQL Server are designed to work best with sets of data, not one row at a time. Jeff Moden famously termed this type of processing ...