Hi,

I hope you could suggest something to improve my data processing...

  I have two tables in my database, the SOURCE and the TARGE table. TARGET table must be updated with the records from the SOURCE table following the order of a field in the SOURCE table. To make it clear, the process is like this:

      SOURCE table has the following fields:
         country_code
         source_code
         apply_order

      TARGET table has the following fields:
         country_code_o
         source_code_o

 The fields of TARGET table must be updated with the contents of the SOURCE table but the processing must be according to apply_order field.

To do this, my script goes like this:

  DECLARE mycursor CURSOR
  FOR
  SELECT
    country_code,
    source_code,
  FROM SOURCE ORDER BY apply_order

  DECLARE
     @apply_order(),
     @country_code(),
     @source_code()

  BEGIN TRANSACTION
  OPEN mycursor
  FETCH mycursor INTO @apply_order, @country_code, @source_code

  --UPDATE the TARGET table now

         UPDATE TARGET
         SET country_code_o = @country_code,
             source_code_o = @source_code


  The script is inside a loop and updates all records. The script works fine without errors, but it takes a lot of time processing. I have about 500K of records to process.

Is there any other better way to do this? I cannot simply use

   UPDATE TARGET SELECT country_code, source_code FROM SOURCE

as this will violate the rule that processing must follow the apply_order field.

Thanks for your help!

INSERT INTO TARGET (country_code_o, source_code_o)
SELECT country_code, source_code from SOURCE ORDER BY apply_order



========================
Scott Klein
Author of:
Professional SQL Server 2005 XML
Professional WCF Programming: .NET Development with the Windows Communication Foundation
Professional LINQ
========================

Thanks for the reply, but my data processing is not supposed to INSERT records to TARGET table, but to UPDATE the fields of TARGET table with values from SOURCE table. Updating must be according to apply_order field of the SOURCE table.

Thanks!