Using WHILE...BREAK or CONTINUE
The WHILE statement repeats a statement or block of statements as long as a specified condition remains true.
Two Transact-SQL statements are commonly used with WHILE: BREAK or CONTINUE. The BREAK statement exits the innermost WHILE loop and the CONTINUE statement restarts a WHILE loop. A program might execute a BREAK statement if, for example, there are no other rows to process. A CONTINUE statement could be executed if, for example, the execution of the code should continue.
Note
If a SELECT statement is used as the condition for the WHILE statement, the SELECT statement must be in parentheses.
The following example uses a WHILE statement to control how many fetches are done:
USE AdventureWorks;
GO
DECLARE abc CURSOR FOR
SELECT * FROM Purchasing.ShipMethod;
OPEN abc;
FETCH NEXT FROM abc
WHILE (@@FETCH_STATUS = 0)
FETCH NEXT FROM abc;
CLOSE abc;
DEALLOCATE abc;
GO
Other valid WHILE condition tests could be the following:
WHILE (@ACounterVariable < 100)
Or
WHILE EXISTS(SELECT LastName FROM Person.Contact WHERE FirstName = N'Anne')
See Also
Other Resources
BEGIN...END (Transact-SQL)
END (BEGIN...END) (Transact-SQL)
BREAK (Transact-SQL)
WHILE (Transact-SQL)
CONTINUE (Transact-SQL)