>>We're talking SQL Server cursors here - not VFP.
>
>Yes, I know. If you have a reason to believe they are worse in SQL please enlighten me.

I posted a link - just one more time

http://wiki.lessthandot.com/index.php/Cursors_and_How_to_Avoid_Them

and if this is not convincing, try to run a cursor on, say, 100K table to update each record with some value and then do the same SET based and compare the speed.