Trigger to update another field in same table - sql

Question

I want to run a trigger when I update a certain field on the database, so it updates another field (basically we have 2 different unique IDs for each record, so when one is changed, we need to update the other too - yay!)
CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER trigger_name ON table AFTER
UPDATE AS
UPDATE table A
SET unique_to_update = NVL(
(SELECT b.unique_to_update_from
FROM table b
WHERE B.other_unique_id = A.unique_id_to_match
), 0);
I have no idea if this works (scared to test it, quite frankly, since I'm certain it'll break things) and even if it did, it'd run on every single update of that table - not just the one field that I wanted.
Any help would be much appreciated, thank you!

Answer 1

Test anything before putting it in production.
Something like this shoud be your trigger:
CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER trigger_name
BEFORE UPDATE of unique_id_to_match
ON table
FOR EACH ROW
AS
BEGIN
select
NVL(
(SELECT b.unique_to_update_from
FROM table b
WHERE B.other_unique_id = :new.unique_id_to_match
), 0)
into :new.unique_to_update
FROM dual;
END;

Answer 2

5000 rows x 900 columns is not so big :)
I was afraid it has 10M of rows :)
OK start
create temporary table tmp_my_important_columns on commit delete rows
as
select unique_id_to_match, unique_to_update_from,
other_unique_id , unique_to_update
from table where rownum < 1;
second
CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER trigger_before_upd_stmt
BEFORE UPDATE
ON table
AS
BEGIN
insert into
tmp_my_important_columns
select unique_id_to_match, unique_to_update_from,
other_unique_id , unique_to_update
from table;
END;
third,
CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER trigger_name
BEFORE UPDATE of unique_id_to_match
ON table
FOR EACH ROW
AS
BEGIN
select
NVL(
(SELECT b.unique_to_update_from
FROM tmp_my_important_columns b
WHERE B.other_unique_id = :new.unique_id_to_match
), 0)
into :new.unique_to_update
FROM dual;
END;
Comments:
After an update, if you update the same rows again, without commit
(which deletes the tmp table), you'll get problems. So, or you commit
after update, or you can add an after update trigger(without for each row) that deletes all, from tmp table, but this is somehow ugly.
You can add indexes on the temporary table.