title: SQL Server Fast Forward Cursors
body: <p>It is generally accepted that the use of cursors in stored procedures should be avoided where possible (replaced with set based logic etc). If you take the cases where you need to iterate over some data, and can do in a read only manner, are fast forward (read only forward) cursor more or less inefficient than say while loops? From my investigations it looks as though the cursor option is generally faster and uses less reads and cpu time.  I haven't done any extensive testing, but is this what others find?  Do cursors of this type (fast forward) carry additional overhead or resource that could be expensive that I don't know about.</p>
  <p>Is all the talk about not using cursors really about avoiding the use of cursors when set-based approaches are available, and the use of updatable cursors etc.</p>