Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 Unleashed, Second Edition

INSTEAD OF Triggers

SQL Server 2000 introduced a new type of trigger called an INSTEAD OF trigger. This new trigger extends SQL Server's trigger capabilities and provides an alternative to the AFTER trigger that was heavily utilized in prior versions of SQL Server.

The name of the trigger gives you some insight into how this new trigger operates. The INSTEAD OF prefix is relevant because this particular trigger performs its actions instead of the action that fired it. This is much different from the AFTER trigger that will perform its actions after the statement that caused it to fire has completed. This means that you can have an INSTEAD OF UPDATE trigger on a table that successfully completes but does not include the actual update to the table. ...