Cursor Performance Question

Hey,



I have a stored procedure below that loops through a table and updates another table. I used to do this client side in vb but was hoping for better performance when doing everything server side.

Question;



Am I doing something wrng since the query is that slow.?
Why is cursors so bad ?


Thanks



David





ALTER PROCEDURE usp_setinternational

AS

Declare @acnt_no int

declare @cntry_code varchar(10)

declare @counter int

declare @error int

declare MyC cursor

Local

for

SELECT ACNT_NO, COUNTRY_CODE FROM INTNL_ACNT

open MyC

fetch next from MyC into @acnt_no,@cntry_code

select @counter = 1

while @@fetch_status = 0

begin

update xform2 set

address_type='m'

where acnt_no = @acnt_no

update addr set delivery='m',cntry_cde= @cntry_code

where addr_id in (select addr_id from acnt_addr where acnt_no = @acnt_no)

select @counter = @counter +1

fetch next from MyC into @acnt_no,@cntry_code

end