Cursor inside cursor

You have a variety of problems. First, why are you using your specific @@FETCH_STATUS values? It should just be @@FETCH_STATUS = 0.

Second, you are not selecting your inner Cursor into anything. And I cannot think of any circumstance where you would select all fields in this way - spell them out!

Here's a sample to go by. Folder has a primary key of "ClientID" that is also a foreign key for Attend. I'm just printing all of the Attend UIDs, broken down by Folder ClientID:

Declare @ClientID int;
Declare @UID int;

DECLARE Cur1 CURSOR FOR
    SELECT ClientID From Folder;

OPEN Cur1
FETCH NEXT FROM Cur1 INTO @ClientID;
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
    PRINT 'Processing ClientID: ' + Cast(@ClientID as Varchar);
    DECLARE Cur2 CURSOR FOR
        SELECT UID FROM Attend Where ClientID=@ClientID;
    OPEN Cur2;
    FETCH NEXT FROM Cur2 INTO @UID;
    WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
    BEGIN
        PRINT 'Found UID: ' + Cast(@UID as Varchar);
        FETCH NEXT FROM Cur2 INTO @UID;
    END;
    CLOSE Cur2;
    DEALLOCATE Cur2;
    FETCH NEXT FROM Cur1 INTO @ClientID;
END;
PRINT 'DONE';
CLOSE Cur1;
DEALLOCATE Cur1;

Finally, are you SURE you want to be doing something like this in a stored procedure? It is very easy to abuse stored procedures and often reflects problems in characterizing your problem. The sample I gave, for example, could be far more easily accomplished using standard select calls.

Do you do any more fetches? You should show those as well. You're only showing us half the code.

It should look like:

FETCH NEXT FROM @Outer INTO ...
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
  DECLARE @Inner...
  OPEN @Inner
  FETCH NEXT FROM @Inner INTO ...
  WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
  BEGIN
  ...
    FETCH NEXT FROM @Inner INTO ...
  END
  CLOSE @Inner
  DEALLOCATE @Inner
  FETCH NEXT FROM @Outer INTO ...
END
CLOSE @Outer
DEALLOCATE @Outer

Also, make sure you do not name the cursors the same... and any code (check your triggers) that gets called does not use a cursor that is named the same. I've seen odd behavior from people using 'theCursor' in multiple layers of the stack.

This smells of something that should be done with a JOIN instead. Can you share the larger problem with us?

---

Hey, I should be able to get this down to a single statement, but I haven't had time to play with it further yet today and may not get to. In the mean-time, know that you should be able to edit the query for your inner cursor to create the row numbers as part of the query using the ROW_NUMBER() function. From there, you can fold the inner cursor into the outer by doing an INNER JOIN on it (you can join on a sub query). Finally, any SELECT statement can be converted to an UPDATE using this method:

UPDATE [YourTable/Alias]
   SET [Column] = q.Value
FROM
(
   ... complicate select query here ...
) q

Where [YourTable/Alias] is a table or alias used in the select query.

You could also sidestep nested cursor issues, general cursor issues, and global variable issues by avoiding the cursors entirely.

declare @rowid int
declare @rowid2 int
declare @id int
declare @type varchar(10)
declare @rows int
declare @rows2 int
declare @outer table (rowid int identity(1,1), id int, type varchar(100))
declare @inner table (rowid int  identity(1,1), clientid int, whatever int)

insert into @outer (id, type) 
Select id, type from sometable

select @rows = count(1) from @outer
while (@rows > 0)
Begin
    select top 1 @rowid = rowid, @id  = id, @type = type
    from @outer
    insert into @innner (clientid, whatever ) 
    select clientid whatever from contacts where contactid = @id
    select @rows2 = count(1) from @inner
    while (@rows2 > 0)
    Begin
        select top 1 /* stuff you want into some variables */
        /* Other statements you want to execute */
        delete from @inner where rowid = @rowid2
        select @rows2 = count(1) from @inner
    End  
    delete from @outer where rowid = @rowid
    select @rows = count(1) from @outer
End