Do I need cursors?

I am creating a stored procedure to send emails (with xp_sendmail, I think)
based on certain conditions. This is my logic:
I need to loop through all of the Table1 records.
if Table2 exists for Table1 and Table2.column='T'
send variation 1 of email
else if table2 exists for table 1 and Table2.column='F'
send variation 2 of email
else if table3 exists for table 1
send variation 3 of email
Should I use a cursor to loop through the Table1 records? Or should I join
Table1 and Table2/Table3 and not have a top level query? I'm thinking I
should not use a cursor.
My second problem is this. Depending on the email variation I need to loop
through some records and concatenate their values. Do I need a cursor for
that? Or do I have other options?
Thanks for any help, I really appreciate it.Nick
DECLARE @.EmailName VARCHAR(100),@.userid VARCHAR(20)
IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM Table2 JOIN Table1 ON Table2.pk=Table1.pk AND
Table2.column='T')

> My second problem is this. Depending on the email variation I need to loop
> through some records and concatenate their values. Do I need a cursor for
> that? Or do I have other options?
SET @.userid='john,arie,alex'
SELECT @.EmailName=@.EmailName+COALESCE(Emailadd,
'') +',' FROM users where
CHARINDEX(',' + userid + ',',','+ @.userid +',')>0 and EmailName IS NOT
NULL
SET @.EmailName=LEFT(@.EmailName,LEN(@.EmailNam
e)-1)
--Send emails
I'm currently unable to test it but I'm sure it gives you an idea.
"Nick" <nickfinity@.nospam.nospam> wrote in message
news:48C35529-4878-455F-9DCC-F97057A4A5B8@.microsoft.com...
>I am creating a stored procedure to send emails (with xp_sendmail, I think)
> based on certain conditions. This is my logic:
> I need to loop through all of the Table1 records.
> if Table2 exists for Table1 and Table2.column='T'
> send variation 1 of email
> else if table2 exists for table 1 and Table2.column='F'
> send variation 2 of email
> else if table3 exists for table 1
> send variation 3 of email
> Should I use a cursor to loop through the Table1 records? Or should I join
> Table1 and Table2/Table3 and not have a top level query? I'm thinking I
> should not use a cursor.
> My second problem is this. Depending on the email variation I need to loop
> through some records and concatenate their values. Do I need a cursor for
> that? Or do I have other options?
> Thanks for any help, I really appreciate it.|||>From the limited information you've posted, it sounds like a CASE
statement is what you're looking for. In general, the only time I ever
find that I must use a cursor is when I have to call a stored procedure
on each value in a resultset. They seem to be much more useful to me in
ad hoc situations than in deployed solutions.
CASE Example in an UPDATE (sorry for the poor formatting):
UPDATE <tablealias1>
SET EmailAddress = CASE WHEN <condition1> THEN <expression>
WHEN <condition2> THEN <expression> ELSE <expression> END
FROM Table1 <tablealias1> INNER JOIN Table2 ON <...>
WHERE <condition>