Skip to Content
Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Bible
book

Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Bible

by Paul Nielsen, Mike White, Uttam Parui
August 2009
Beginner to intermediate
1680 pages
42h 30m
English
Wiley
Content preview from Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Bible

Chapter 15. Modifying Data

IN THIS CHAPTER

  • Inserting data from expressions, other result sets, and stored procedures

  • Updating and deleting data

  • Mastering the new merge command

  • Exposing inserted and deleted tables to the DML

Things change. Life moves on. Because the purpose of a database is to accurately represent reality, the data must change along with reality. For SQL programmers, that means inserting, updating, and deleting rows—using the basic data manipulation language (DML) commands. However, these operations aren't limited to writing single rows of data. Working with SQL means thinking in terms of data sets. The process of modifying data with SQL draws on the entire range of SQL Server data-retrieval capabilities—the powerful SELECT, joins, full-text searches, subqueries, and views.

This chapter is all about modifying data within SQL Server using the INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and MERGE SQL commands. Modifying data raises issues that need to be addressed, or at least considered. Inserting surrogate primary keys requires special methods. Table constraints may interfere with the data modification. Referential integrity demands that some DELETE operations cascade to other related tables. This chapter will help you understand these concerns and offer some ways to deal with them. Because these potential obstacles affect INSERT, UPDATE, MERGE, and, to some degree, DELETE, they are addressed in their own sections after the sections devoted to the individual commands.

Note

The ACID database ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Microsoft® SQL Server 2008 R2 Unleashed

Microsoft® SQL Server 2008 R2 Unleashed

Ray Rankins, Paul Bertucci, Chris Gallelli, Alex T. Silverstein
Microsoft® SQL Server 2005 Unleashed

Microsoft® SQL Server 2005 Unleashed

Ray Rankins, Paul Bertucci, Chris Gallelli, Alex T. Silverstein, Tudor Trufinescu, John Kane

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780470257043Purchase book