You need to recommend a solution to improve the performance of usp.UpdateInventory. The solution must minimize the amount of development effort. What should you include in the recommendation?

A table variable stores intermediate result sets in memory (tempdb), allowing set-based operations that replace slow row-by-row processing. Table variables have less locking overhead than temporary tables, require no explicit cleanup, and can be used to batch updates in usp.UpdateInventory with minimal refactoring, satisfying the requirement to minimize development effort.

A common table expression (CTE) is a named temporary result set scoped to a single statement and does not persist data between operations, making it unsuitable as a standalone performance improvement for a stored procedure performing inventory updates.

A subquery is evaluated inline within a single query and does not provide a mechanism to store or reuse intermediate result sets across multiple statements within the stored procedure, offering limited performance benefit for complex update logic.

A cursor processes rows one at a time (row-by-row), which is typically the cause of poor performance in stored procedures rather than a solution to it; replacing existing logic with a cursor would likely worsen performance.