:: in the past 6 or 7 years that I've been doing SQL Server I have :: always heard that you should avoid cursors at all costs I recall something like that. I only used SQL Server for a few months on a project, but I did run into its glaring performance problem in cursors. It was a special case though, and MS recommened you use a temp table to get around it. I can't remeber the exact situation it would occur, but it was very slow. In all other cases, cursors where fine in SQL Server and there's no reason not to use them regularly. Also, you don't have to worry about performance issues with Oracle cursors. :-)