Insert various value - sql

Question

I have a table like this.
create table help(
id number primary key,
number_s integer NOT NULL);
I had to insert value 0 from id 1 and id 915 I solved this one in a simple way doing
update help set number_s=0 where id<=915;
This one was easy.
Now I have to set a numbers ( that change every row) from id 915 to last row.
I was doing
update help set number_s=51 where id=916;
update help set number_s=3 where id=917;
There are more than 1.000 row to be updated how can I do it very fast?
When I had this problem I used to use sequence to auto increment value like id (example
insert into help(id,number_s) values (id_sequence.nextval,16);
insert into help(id,number_s) values (id_sequence.nextval,48);
And so on but on this case it cannot be used because in this case id start from 915 and not 1...) How can I do it very fast? I hope it is clear the problem.

Answer 1

Since you have your ids and numbers in a file with a simple structure, it's a fairly small number, and assuming this is something you're going to do once, honestly what I would do would be to pull the file into Excel, use the text functions to build 1000 insert statements and cut and paste them wherever.
If those assumptions are incorrect, you could (1) use sqlldr to load this file into a temporary table and (2) run an update on your help table based on the rows in that temporary table.

Answer 2

As mentioned in previous answers and according to your comment that there is a file stored in your system, You can use the external table / SQL loader to achieve the result.
I am trying to show you the demo as follows:
-- Create an external table pointing to your file
CREATE TABLE "EXT_SEQUENCES" (
"ID" number ,
"number_s" number
)
ORGANIZATION EXTERNAL ( TYPE ORACLE_LOADER
DEFAULT DIRECTORY "<directory name>" ACCESS PARAMETERS (
RECORDS DELIMITED BY NEWLINE
BADFILE 'bad_file.txt'
LOGFILE 'log_file.txt'
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"' MISSING FIELD VALUES ARE NULL
) LOCATION ( '<file name>' )
) REJECT LIMIT UNLIMITED;
-- Now update your help table
MERGE INTO help H
USING EXT_SEQUENCES
ON ( H.ID = E.ID)
WHEN MATCHED THEN
UPDATE SET H.number_s = E.number_s;
Note: You need to change the access parameters of the external table according to your actual data in the file.
Hope you will get proper direction now.
Cheers!!