Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Bible

Chapter 12

Modifying Data In SQL Server

In This Chapter

Inserting Data From Expressions, Other Result Sets, and Stored Procedures

Updating and Deleting Data

Mastering the 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 to modify 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 you need to address, or at least consider. 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 can 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.

The ...