T-SQL: Looping through an array of known values

Question

Here\'s my scenario:

Let\'s say I have a stored procedure in which I need to call another stored procedure on a set of specific ids; is there a way to do this?

i

Answer 1

use a static cursor variable and a split function:

declare @comma_delimited_list varchar(4000)
set @comma_delimited_list = '4,7,12,22,19'

declare @cursor cursor
set @cursor = cursor static for 
  select convert(int, Value) as Id from dbo.Split(@comma_delimited_list) a

declare @id int
open @cursor
while 1=1 begin
  fetch next from @cursor into @id
  if @@fetch_status <> 0 break
  ....do something....
end
-- not strictly necessary w/ cursor variables since they will go out of scope like a normal var
close @cursor
deallocate @cursor

Cursors have a bad rep since the default options when declared against user tables can generate a lot of overhead.

But in this case the overhead is quite minimal, less than any other methods here. STATIC tells SQL Server to materialize the results in tempdb and then iterate over that. For small lists like this, it's the optimal solution.