Microsoft® SQL Server™ statements produce a complete result set, but there are times when the results are best processed one row at a time. Opening a cursor on a result set allows processing the result set one row at a time. SQL Server version 7.0 also introduces assigning a cursor to a variable or parameter with a cursor data type.
Cursor operations are supported on these statements:
| DECLARE CURSOR | CLOSE |
| DECLARE @local_variable | DEALLOCATE |
| OPEN | UPDATE |
| SET | DELETE |
| FETCH | CREATE PROCEDURE |
These system functions and system stored procedures also support cursors:
| @@CURSOR_ROWS | sp_describe_cursor |
| @@FETCH_STATUS | sp_describe_cursor_columns |
| CURSOR_STATUS | sp_describe_cursor_tables |
| sp_cursor_list |