Cursors can become costly when they fetch many records and run additional queries inside a loop. Optimization therefore begins by asking whether row-by-row work is necessary at all.
Reduce the input
Filter rows before declaring the cursor, select only required columns, and confirm that the query uses appropriate indexes.
Choose options deliberately
A LOCAL FAST_FORWARD cursor is often suitable for a forward-only, read-only iteration. Static, keyset, dynamic, and updatable cursors have different semantics and trade-offs, so measure rather than assuming one type is always best.
Prefer set-based changes
UPDATE p
SET p.IsActive = 0
FROM dbo.Products AS p
WHERE p.DiscontinuedDate < CONVERT(date, SYSDATETIME())
AND p.IsActive = 1;Avoid per-row network work
Do not issue a separate database round trip for each row when a bulk operation can produce the same result. If an external API must be called, consider queue-based processing and explicit retry logic.
Cleanup and benchmarking
Close and deallocate cursors, avoid long locks, and compare logical reads, CPU, duration, and contention on a representative test dataset.
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