Structuring many update statements in SQL Server - sql

Question

I'm using SQL Server. I'm also relatively new to writing SQL... in a strong way. It's mostly self-taught, so I'm probably missing key ideas in terms of proper format.
I've a table called 'SiteResources' and a table called 'ResourceKeys'. SiteResources has an integer that corresponds to the placement of a string ('siteid') and a 'resourceid' which is an integer id that corresponds to 'resourceid' in ResourceKeys. ResourceKeys also contains a string for each key it contains ('resourcemessage'). Basically, these two tables are responsible for representing how strings are stored and displayed on a web page.
The best way to consistently update these two tables, is what? Let's say I have 5000 rows in SiteResources and 1000 rows in ResourceKeys. I could have an excel sheet, or a small program, which generates 5000 singular update statements, like:
update SiteResources set resoruceid = 0
WHERE siteid IS NULL AND resourceid IN (select resourceid
from ResourceKeys where resourcemessage LIKE 'FooBar')
I could have thousands of those singular update statements, with FooBar representing each string in the database I might want to change at once, but isn't there a cleaner way to write such a massive number of update statements? From what I understand, I should be wrapping all of my statements in begin/end/go too, just in-case of failure - which leads me to believe there is a more systematic way of writing these update statements? Is my hunch correct? Or is the way I'm going about this correct / ideal? I could change the structure of my tables, I suppose, or the structure of how I store data - that might simplify things - but let's just say I can't do that, in this instance.

Answer 1

As far as I understand, you just need to update everything in table SiteResources with empty parameter 'placement of a string'. If so, here is the code:
UPDATE a
SET resourceid = 0
FROM SiteResources a
WHERE EXISTS (select * from ResourceKeys b where a.resourceid = b.resourceid)
AND a.siteid IS NULL
For some specific things like 'FooBar'-rows you can add it like this:
UPDATE a
SET resourceid = 0
FROM SiteResources a
WHERE EXISTS (select * from ResourceKeys b where a.resourceid = b.resourceid and b.resourcemessage IN ('FooBar', 'FooBar2', 'FooBar3', ...))
AND a.siteid IS NULL

Answer 2

Let me see if I understood the question correctly. You'd like to update resourceid to 0 if the resourcemessage corresponds to a list of strings ? If so, you can build your query like this.
UPDATE r
SET resourceid = 0
FROM SiteResources r
JOIN ResourceKeys k ON r.resourceid = k.resourceid
WHERE k.resourcemessage IN ('FooBar', ...)
AND r.siteid IS NULL;
This is using an extended UPDATE syntax in transact-sql allowing you to use a JOIN in the UPDATE statement. But maybe it's not exactly what you want ? Why do you use the LIKE operator in your query, without wildcard (%) ?

Answer 3

With table-valued parameters, you can pass a table from your client app to the SQL batch that your app submits for execution. You can use this to pass a list of all the strings you need to update to a single UPDATE that updates all rows at once.
That way you don't have to worry about all of your concerns: the number of updates, transactional atomicitty, error handling. As a bonus, performance will be improved.
I recommend that you do a bit of research what TVPs are and how they are used.