Trigger running every time despite conditional statement - sql

Question

I am trying to write an update trigger on a table which would cause it to run an additional update statement only if a certain column has been changed, so far the trigger runs the update no matter what, hoping maybe someone can see what I am doing wrong here.
Here is the trigger.
ALTER TRIGGER [dbo].[StatusChangedUpdateTrigger]
ON [dbo].[Trans_Order]
AFTER UPDATE
AS
DECLARE #OldOrderStatusId INT, #NewStatusOrderId INT, #ERRNUM INT;
BEGIN
SET #OldOrderStatusId = (SELECT OrderStatusId FROM deleted);
SET #NewStatusOrderId = (SELECT OrderStatusId FROM inserted);
IF (#OldOrderStatusId != #NewStatusOrderId)
SET NOCOUNT ON;
UPDATE Trans_Order
SET StatusChanged = 1
WHERE Id = (SELECT ID FROM inserted)
END
For some reason this is running no matter what, I can never set StatusChanged to 0 as it will automatically flip it back to 1 even if the OrderStatusId hasn't changed. So my update statement is running no matter what, so I am guessing I am doing something wrong in the if statement.

Answer 1

Hmmmm . . . Your logic seems strange. I would expect:
UPDATE t
SET StatusChanged = 1
FROM Trans_Order t JOIN
Inserted i
ON t.id = i.id JOIN
Deleted d
ON t.id = d.id
WHERE i.OrderStatusId <> d.OrderStatusId;
You might need to take NULL values into account -- although your code does not.
Note that your code is just a bug waiting to happen, because it assumes that inserted and deleted have only one row.
The specific problem with your code is that it is really:
IF (#OldOrderStatusId != #NewStatusOrderId)
BEGIN
SET NOCOUNT ON;
END;
UPDATE Trans_Order
SET StatusChanged = 1
WHERE Id = (SELECT ID FROM inserted);
Your indentation has confused the logic. However, you should still use the set-based version so the trigger does not fail.

Answer 2

The correct way to approach your trigger is as follows:
create or alter trigger [dbo].[StatusChangedUpdateTrigger] on [dbo].[Trans_Order]
after update
as
set nocount on
if ##RowCount=0 return
if Update(OrderStatusId)
begin
update t
set statusChanged=1
from inserted i join deleted d on d.id=i.id and d.OrderStatusId != i.OrderStatusId
join Trans_Order t on t.id=i.id
end
Always test ##rowcount and return if no rows updated.
Always put set options before DML
As you are only looking to update if a specific column is updated you can test specifically for that and if the update statement that's run doesn't touch that column the trigger will not run.
This will correctly account for multiple rows being updated and only update those where the new value is different to the old value.