MySQL has this incredibly useful yet properitary REPLACE INTO
SQL Command.
Can this easily be emulated in SQL Server 2005?
Starting a new Transaction, doing a Select()
and then either UPDATE
or INSERT
and COMMIT
is always a little bit of a pain, especially when doing it in the application and therefore always keeping 2 versions of the statement.
I wonder if there is an easy and universal way to implement such a function into SQL Server 2005?
This is something that annoys me about MSSQL (rant on my blog). I wish MSSQL supported
upsert
.@Dillie-O's code is a good way in older SQL versions (+1 vote), but it still is basically two IO operations (the
exists
and then theupdate
orinsert
)There's a slightly better way on this post, basically:
This reduces it to one IO operations if it's an update, or two if an insert.
MS Sql2008 introduces
merge
from the SQL:2003 standard:Now it's really just one IO operation, but awful code :-(
The functionality you're looking for is traditionally called an UPSERT. Atleast knowing what it's called might help you find what you're looking for.
I don't think SQL Server 2005 has any great ways of doing this. 2008 introduces the MERGE statement that can be used to accomplish this as shown in: http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/3739131 or http://blogs.conchango.com/davidportas/archive/2007/11/14/SQL-Server-2008-MERGE.aspx
Merge was available in the beta of 2005, but they removed it out in the final release.
What the upsert/merge is doing is something to the effect of...
So hopefully the combination of those articles and this pseudo code can get things moving.
I wrote a blog post about this issue.
The bottom line is that if you want cheap updates ... and you want to be safe for concurrent usage. try:
This way you have 1 operation for updates and a max of 3 operations for inserts. so, if you are generally updating this is a safe cheap option.
I would also be very careful not to use anything that is unsafe for concurrent usage. Its really easy to get primary key violations or duplicate rows in production.