Are cursors/While loops the only way to make administrative changes to multiple databases?

I specifically want a programmable way to change the recovery model of all the databases on a server, and i know this solution can be applied to all 'Alter Database' commands. While I know SMO in PowerShell can solve this problem very easily: Import-Module SQLPS CD SQL\*ServerName*\*InstanceName*\databases foreach ($database in (ls -force)){ $database.recoverymodel = 'Full' $database.update } I'm looking for the most efficient T-SQL solution. It has been ingrained in my head to avoid cursors at all costs, however I can't think of a set based solution to perform alter statements. Here is the cursor based solution. DECLARE @sql varchar(MAX), @name varchar(50) DECLARE cur CURSOR FOR SELECT name FROM sys.databases where name 'tempdb'; OPEN cur FETCH NEXT FROM cur INTO @name WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0 BEGIN SET @sql = 'ALTER DATABASE ' + @name + ' SET RECOVERY FULL;' exec(@sql) FETCH NEXT FROM cur INTO @name END CLOSE CUR DEALLOCATE cur 1. This can also be done with a while loop, but that solution still goes through a looping process... do while loops offer significantly better performance? 2. Am i being paranoid about performance? I say that because administrative tasks such as this aren't done very often, and there generally isn't a massive amount of objects you need to loop through. However i always think "What if i worked in a large environment with thousands of objects" and then i begin to feel guilty that I may not be using the most efficient solution.