title: alternative to sql cursor
body: <p>I am currently using a sql cursor to look up a table to update another table. I have a table which contains a lot of phrases. I want update another table to set 1 if any of those phrases falls into any of the column in the update table. I am using cursor and char to look for the phrase. The cursor is taking long time and I'm just wondering if I could use anything else instead of the cursor. Thanks. I'm using sql server and  here's the code</p>
  
  <pre><code>declare @word varchar(max)
      declare @aCursor cursor for
  SELECT col from table
      open acursor
      fetch next from acursor into @word
      while @@fetch_status=0
      begin
  SET @word = '' + @word + ''
  UPDATE updatetable
  SET updatecol = 'y'
  FROM updatetable u, tableb b
  WHERE u.id = b.id AND (CHARINDEX(@word, u.name) &gt; 0 OR CHARINDEX(@word, u.city) &gt;
      fetch next from acursor into @word
      end
      close acursor
      deallocate acursor
  </code></pre>