String Concatenation Using CURSORs

Hi all,

I have a sitaution here where I need to convert some relational data to a flat file. I have a primary record that flatens out pretty well with the exception of two columns that need to have row data converted to strings via concatenation. The column size is Char(146) . I attempted to use 2 cursors to create the strings.

C1 --outside cursor to pull unique record id (161,000+ records)

C2 -- SELECTs the top 29 secondary (relational) records for each C1 rec
(FIELDX as Char(5))

FIELDX is the concatenated up to 29 times and inserted in to a flat table
based on record id for flat file export.

The issue is that this takes FOREVER to run and the 3Ghz XEON w/2GB Ram server weeps.

Declarations are as follows:

DECLARE C1 CURSOR FAST_FORWARD READ_ONLY
FOR
SELECT Distinct Record_ID
FROM tblProcedure

DECLARE C2 CURSOR FAST_FORWARD READ_ONLY
FOR
--need only the top 29 relational records to string out
SELECT TOP 29 Cast(pr_icd1 as Char(5))
FROM tblProcedure WHERE Record_ID = @RECID --From C1

OPEN C2

SET @tmpICDstr = ''

FETCH NEXT FROM C2 INTO @tmpICDchar

WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN

SET @tmpICDstr = @tmpICDchar + @tmpICDstr

FETCH NEXT FROM C2 INTO @tmpICDchar


END

--'INSERT INTO [Validation].[dbo].[tmpICDStr] (RECID, sg) VALUES
(@RECID, @tmpICDstr)
--'INSERT INTO @tmp (RECID, STRsg) VALUES (@RECID, @tmpICDstr)
SET @tmpICDchar = ''

Anybody have a suggestion on how to speed this up. I am looking at about 1min/100 C1 records. Do the math for 161,000+ C1 records. Ugh.

Any suggestion would be appeciated!

tnx