Forbid insert into table on certain conditions - sql

Question

I have a SQL Server 2008 database. There are three terminals connected to it (A, B, C). There is a table SampleTable in the database, which reacts to any terminal activity. Every time there is some activity on any terminal, logged on to this DB, the new row is inserted into SampleTable.
I want to redirect traffic from one (C) of the three terminals to write to table RealTable and not SampleTable, but I have to do this on DB layer since services that write terminal activity to DB are in Black Box.
I already have some triggers working on SampleTable with the redirecting logic, but the problem is that rows are still being inserted into SampleTable.
What is the cleanest solution for this. I am certain that deleting rows in an inserting trigger is bad, bad, bad.
Please help.
Edit:
Our current logic is something like this (this is pseudo code):
ALTER TRIGGER DiffByTerminal
ON SampleTable
AFTER INSERT
AS
DECLARE #ActionCode VARCHAR(3),
#ActionTime DATETIME,
#TerminalId INT
SELECT #ActionCode = ins.ActionCode,
#ActionTime = ins.ActionTime,
#TerminalId = ins.TerminalId
FROM inserted ins
IF(#TerminalId = 'C')
BEGIN
INSERT INTO RealTable
(
...
)
VALUES
(
#ActionCode,
#ActionTime,
#TerminalId
)
END

Answer 1

In order to "intercept" something before a row gets inserted into a table, you need an INSTEAD OF trigger, not an AFTER trigger. So you can drop your existing trigger (which also included flawed logic that assumed all inserts would be single-row) and create this INSTEAD OF trigger instead:
DROP TRIGGER DiffByTerminal;
GO
CREATE TRIGGER dbo.DiffByTerminal
ON dbo.SampleTable
INSTEAD OF INSERT
AS
BEGIN
SET NOCOUNT ON;
INSERT dbo.RealTable(...) SELECT ActionCode, ActionTime, TerminalID
FROM inserted
WHERE TerminalID = 'C';
INSERT dbo.SampleTable(...) SELECT ActionCode, ActionTime, TerminalID
FROM inserted
WHERE TerminalID <> 'C';
END
GO
This will handle single-row inserts and multi-row inserts consisting of (a) only C (b) only non-C and (c) a mix.

Answer 2

One of the easiest solution for you is INSTEAD OF trigger. Simply stating, it's trigger that "fires" on very action you decide and lets you "override" the default behavior of the action.
You can override the INSERT, DELETE and UPDATE statements for specific table/view (you use it a lot with views that combine data from different tables and you want make the view insert-able) using INSTEAD OF trigger, where you can put your logic. inside the trigger you can then call again to INSERT when it's appropriate, and you don't have to worry about recursion - INSTEAD OF triggers won't apply on statements from inside the trigger code itself.
Enjoy.