select the rows affected by an update - sql

If I have a table with this fields:
int:id_account
int:session
string:password
Now for a login statement I run this sql UPDATE command:
UPDATE tbl_name
SET session = session + 1
WHERE id_account = 17 AND password = 'apple'
Then I check if a row was affected, and if one indeed was affected I know that the password was correct.
Next what I want to do is retrieve all the info of this affected row so I'll have the rest of the fields info.
I can use a simple SELECT statement but I'm sure I'm missing something here, there must be a neater way you gurus know, and going to tell me about (:
Besides it bothered me since the first login sql statement I ever written.
Is there any performance-wise way to combine a SELECT into an UPDATE if the UPDATE did update a row?
Or am I better leaving it simple with two statements? Atomicity isn't needed, so I might better stay away from table locks for example, no?

You should use the same WHERE statement for SELECT. It will return the modified rows, because your UPDATE did not change any columns used for lookup:
UPDATE tbl_name
SET session = session + 1
WHERE id_account = 17 AND password = 'apple';
SELECT *
FROM tbl_name
WHERE id_account = 17 AND password = 'apple';
An advice: never store passwords as plain text! Use a hash function, like this:
MD5('apple')

There is ROW_COUNT() (do read about details in the docs).
Following up by SQL is ok and simple (which is always good), but it might unnecessary stress the system.

This won't work for statements such as...
Update Table
Set Value = 'Something Else'
Where Value is Null
Select Value From Table
Where Value is Null
You would have changed the value with the update and would be unable to recover the affected records unless you stored them beforehand.
Select * Into #TempTable
From Table
Where Value is Null
Update Table
Set Value = 'Something Else'
Where Value is Null
Select Value, UniqueValue
From #TempTable TT
Join Table T
TT.UniqueValue = T.UniqueValue
If you're lucky, you may be able to join the temp table's records to a unique field within Table to verify the update. This is just one small example of why it is important to enumerate records.

You can get the effected rows by just using ##RowCount..
select top (Select ##RowCount) * from YourTable order by 1 desc

Related

simple UPDATE query on large table has bad performance

I need to do the following update query through a stored procedure:
UPDATE table1
SET name = #name (this is the stored procedure inputparameter)
WHERE name IS NULL
Table1 has no indexes or keys, 5 columns which are 4 integers and 1 varchar (updatable column 'name' is the varchar column)
The NULL records are about 15.000.000 rows that need updating. This takes about 50 minutes, which I think is too long.
I'm running an Azure SQL DB Standard S6 (400DTU's).
Can anyone give me an advise to improve performance?
As you don't have any keys, or indexes, I can suggest following approach.
1- Create a new table using INTO (which will copy the data) like following query.
SELECT
CASE
WHEN NAME IS NULL THEN #name
ELSE NAME
END AS NAME,
<other columns >
INTO dbo.newtable
FROM table1
2- Drop the old table
drop table table1
3- Rename the new table to table1
exec sp_rename 'dbo.newtable', 'table1'
Another approach can be using batch update, sometime you get better performance compared to bulk update (You need to test by adjusting the batch size).
WHILE EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM table1 WHERE name is null)
BEGIN
UPDATE TOP (10000) table1
SET name = #name
WHERE n ame is null
END
can you do with following method ?
UPDATE table1
SET name = ISNULL(name,#name)
for null values it will update with #name and rest will be updated with same value.
No. You are updating 15,000,000 rows which is going to take a long time. Each update has overhead for finding the row and logging the value.
With so many rows to update, it is unlikely that the overhead is finding the rows. If you add an index on name, the update is going to actually have to update the index as well as updating the original values.
If your concern is locking the database, you can set up a loop where you do something like this over and over:
UPDATE TOP (100000) table1
SET name = #name (this is the stored procedure inputparameter)
WHERE name IS NULL;
100,000 rows should be about 30 seconds or so.
In this case, an index on name does help. Otherwise, each iteration of the loop would in essence be reading the entire table.

CASE vs Multiple UPDATE queries for large data sets - Performance

For performance what option would be better for large data sets that are to be updated?
Using a CASE statement or Individual update queries?
CASE Example:
UPDATE tbl_name SET field_name =
CASE
WHEN condition_1 THEN 'Blah'
WHEN condition_2 THEN 'Foo'
WHEN condition_x THEN 123
ELSE 'bar'
END AS value
Individual Query Example:
UPDATE tbl_name SET field_name = 'Blah' WHERE field_name = condition_1
UPDATE tbl_name SET field_name = 'Foo' WHERE field_name = condition_2
UPDATE tbl_name SET field_name = 123 WHERE field_name = condition_x
UPDATE tbl_name SET field_name = 'bar' WHERE field_name = condition_y
NOTE: About 300,000 records are going to be updated and the CASE statement would have about 10,000 WHEN conditions. If using the individual queries it's about 10,000 as well
The CASE version.
This is because there is a good chance you are altering the same row more than once with the individual statements. If row 10 has both condition_1 and condition_y then it will need to get read and altered twice. If you have a clustered index this means two clustered index updates on top of whatever the other field(s) that were modified were.
If you can do it as a single statement, each row will be read only once and it should run much quicker.
I changed a similar process about a year ago that used dozens of UPDATE statements in sequence to use a since UPDATE with CASE and processing time dropped about 80%.
It seems logic to me that on the first option SQL Server will go through the table only once and for each row, it will evaluate the condition.
On the second, it will have to go through all table 4 times
So, for a table with 1000 rows, on the first option on the best case scenario we are talking about 1000 evaluations and worst case, 3000.
On the second we'll always have 4000 evaluations
So option 1 would be the faster.
As pointed out by Mitch, try making a temp table filling it with all the data you need, make a different temp table for each column (field) you want to change. You should also add an index to the temp table(s) for added performance improvement.
This way your update statement becomes (more or less):
UPDATE tbl_name SET field_name = COALESCE((SELECT value FROM temp_tbl WHERE tbl_name.conditional_field = temp_tbl.condition_value), field_name),
field_name2 = COALESCE((SELECT value FROM temp_tbl2 WHERE tbl_name.conditional_field2 = temp_tbl2.condition_value), field_name2)
and so on..
This should give you good performance while scaling up for large volumes of updates at once.

Update if different/changed

Is it possible to perform an update statement in sql, but only update if the updates are different?
for example
if in the database, col1 = "hello"
update table1 set col1 = 'hello'
should not perform any kind of update
however, if
update table1 set col1 = "bye"
this should perform an update.
During query compilation and execution, SQL Server does not take the time to figure out whether an UPDATE statement will actually change any values or not. It just performs the writes as expected, even if unnecessary.
In the scenario like
update table1 set col1 = 'hello'
you might think SQL won’t do anything, but it will – it will perform all of the writes necessary as if you’d actually changed the value. This occurs for both the physical table (or clustered index) as well as any non-clustered indexes defined on that column. This causes writes to the physical tables/indexes, recalculating of indexes and transaction log writes. When working with large data sets, there is huge performance benefits to only updating rows that will receive a change.
If we want to avoid the overhead of these writes when not necessary we have to devise a way to check for the need to be updated. One way to check for the need to update would be to add something like “where col <> 'hello'.
update table1 set col1 = 'hello' where col1 <> 'hello'
But this would not perform well in some cases, for example if you were updating multiple columns in a table with many rows and only a small subset of those rows would actually have their values changed. This is because of the need to then filter on all of those columns, and non-equality predicates are generally not able to use index seeks, and the overhead of table & index writes and transaction log entries as mentioned above.
But there is a much better alternative using a combination of an EXISTS clause with an EXCEPT clause. The idea is to compare the values in the destination row to the values in the matching source row to determine if an update is actually needed. Look at the modified query below and examine the additional query filter starting with EXISTS. Note how inside the EXISTS clause the SELECT statements have no FROM clause. That part is particularly important because this only adds on an additional constant scan and a filter operation in the query plan (the cost of both is trivial). So what you end up with is a very lightweight method for determining if an UPDATE is even needed in the first place, avoiding unnecessary write overhead.
update table1 set col1 = 'hello'
/* AVOID NET ZERO CHANGES */
where exists
(
/* DESTINATION */
select table1.col1
except
/* SOURCE */
select col1 = 'hello'
)
This looks overly complicated vs checking for updates in a simple WHERE clause for the simple scenerio in the original question when you are updating one value for all rows in a table with a literal value. However, this technique works very well if you are updating multiple columns in a table, and the source of your update is another query and you want to minimize writes and transaction logs entries. It also performs better than testing every field with <>.
A more complete example might be
update table1
set col1 = 'hello',
col2 = 'hello',
col3 = 'hello'
/* Only update rows from CustomerId 100, 101, 102 & 103 */
where table1.CustomerId IN (100, 101, 102, 103)
/* AVOID NET ZERO CHANGES */
and exists
(
/* DESTINATION */
select table1.col1
table1.col2
table1.col3
except
/* SOURCE */
select z.col1,
z.col2,
z.col3
from #anytemptableorsubquery z
where z.CustomerId = table1.CustomerId
)
The idea is to not perform any update if a new value is the same as in DB right now
WHERE col1 != #newValue
(obviously there is also should be some Id field to identify a row)
WHERE Id = #Id AND col1 != #newValue
PS: Originally you want to do update only if value is 'bye' so just add AND col1 = 'bye', but I feel that this is redundant, I just suppose
PS 2: (From a comment) Also note, this won't update the value if col1 is NULL, so if NULL is a possibility, make it WHERE Id = #Id AND (col1 != #newValue OR col1 IS NULL).
If you want to change the field to 'hello' only if it is 'bye', use this:
UPDATE table1
SET col1 = 'hello'
WHERE col1 = 'bye'
If you want to update only if it is different that 'hello', use:
UPDATE table1
SET col1 = 'hello'
WHERE col1 <> 'hello'
Is there a reason for this strange approach? As Daniel commented, there is no special gain - except perhaps if you have thousands of rows with col1='hello'. Is that the case?
This is possible with a before-update trigger.
In this trigger you can compare the old with the new values and cancel the update if they don't differ. But this will then lead to an error on the caller's site.
I don't know, why you want to do this, but here are several possibilities:
Performance: There is no performance gain here, because the update would not only need to find the correct row but additionally compare the data.
Trigger: If you want the trigger only to be fired if there was a real change, you need to implement your trigger like so, that it compares all old values to the new values before doing anything.
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE stackoverflow([your_value] IN TYPE) AS
BEGIN
UPDATE [your_table] t
SET t.[your_collumn] = [your_value]
WHERE t.[your_collumn] != [your_value];
COMMIT;
EXCEPTION
[YOUR_EXCEPTION];
END stackoverflow;
You need an unique key id in your table, (let's suppose it's value is 1) to do something like:
UPDATE table1 SET col1="hello" WHERE id=1 AND col1!="hello"
Old question but none of the answers correctly address null values.
Using <> or != will get you into trouble when comparing values for differences if there are is potential null in the new or old value to safely update only when changed use the is distinct from operator in Postgres. Read more about it here
I think this should do the trick for ya...
create trigger [trigger_name] on [table_name]
for insert
AS declare #new_val datatype,#id int;
select #new_val = i.column_name from inserted i;
select #id = i.Id from inserted i;
update table_name set column_name = #new_val
where table_name.Id = #id and column_name != #new_val;

Delete and Insert or Select and Update

We have a status table. When the status changes we currently delete the old record and insert a new.
We are wondering if it would be faster to do a select to check if it exists followed by an insert or update.
Although similar to the following question, it is not the same, since we are changing individual records and the other question was doing a total table refresh.
DELETE, INSERT vs UPDATE || INSERT
Since you're talking SQL Server 2008, have you considered MERGE? It's a single statement that allows you to do an update or insert:
create table T1 (
ID int not null,
Val1 varchar(10) not null
)
go
insert into T1 (ID,Val1)
select 1,'abc'
go
merge into T1
using (select 1 as ID,'def' as Val1) upd on T1.ID = upd.ID --<-- These identify the row you want to update/insert and the new value you want to set. They could be #parameters
when matched then update set Val1 = upd.Val1
when not matched then insert (ID,Val1) values (upd.ID,upd.Val1);
What about INSERT ... ON DUPLICATE KEY? First doing a select to check if a record exists and checking in your program the result of that creates a race condition. That might not be important in your case if there is only a single instance of the program however.
INSERT INTO users (username, email) VALUES ('Jo', 'jo#email.com')
ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE email = 'jo#email.com'
You can use ##ROWCOUNT and perform UPDATE. If it was 0 rows affected - then perform INSERT after, nothing otherwise.
Your suggestion would mean always two instructions for each status change. The usual way is to do an UPDATE and then check if the operation changed any rows (Most databases have a variable like ROWCOUNT which should be greater than 0 if something changed). If it didn't, do an INSERT.
Search for UPSERT for find patterns for your specific DBMS
Personally, I think the UPDATE method is the best. Instead of doing a SELECT first to check if a record already exists, you can first attempt an UPDATE but if no rows are affected (using ##ROWCOUNT) you can do an INSERT.
The reason for this is that sooner or later you might want to track status changes, and the best way to do this would be to keep an audit trail of all changes using a trigger on the status table.

MySQL -- mark all but 1 matching row

This is similar to this question, but it seems like some of the answers there aren't quite compatible with MySQL (or I'm not doing it right), and I'm having a heck of a time figuring out the changes I need. Apparently my SQL is rustier than I thought it was. I'm also looking to change a column value rather than delete, but I think at least that part is simple...
I have a table like:
rowid SERIAL
fingerprint TEXT
duplicate BOOLEAN
contents TEXT
created_date DATETIME
I want to set duplicate=true for all but the first (by created_date) of each group by fingerprint. It's easy to mark all of the rows with duplicate fingerprints as dupes. The part I'm getting stuck on is keeping the first.
One of the apps that populates the table does bulk loads of data, with multiple workers loading data from different sources, and the workers' data isn't necessarily partitioned by date, so it's a pain to try to mark these all as they come in (the first one inserted isn't necessarily the first one by date). Also, I already have a bunch of data in there I'll need to clean up either way. So I'd rather just have a relatively efficient query I can run after a bulk load to clean up than try to build it into that app.
Thanks!
MySQL needs to be explicitly told if the data you are grouping by is larger than 1024 bytes (see this link for details). So if your data in the fingerprint column is larger than 1024 bytes you should use set the max_sort_length variable (see this link for details about values allowed, and this link about how to set it) to a larger number so that the group by wont silently use only part of your data for grouping.
Once you're certain that MySQL will group your data properly, the following query will set the duplicate flag so that the first fingerprint record has duplicate set to FALSE/0 and any subsequent fingerprint records have duplicate set to TRUE/1:
UPDATE mytable m1
INNER JOIN (SELECT fingerprint
, MIN(rowid) AS minrow
FROM mytable m2
GROUP BY fingerprint) m3
ON m1.fingerprint = m3.fingerprint
SET m1.duplicate = m3.minrow != m1.rowid;
Please keep in mind that this solution does not take NULLs into account and if it is possible for the fingerprint field to be NULL then you would need additional logic to handle that case.
How about a two-step approach, assuming you can go offline during a data load:
Mark every item as duplicate.
Select the earliest row from each group, and clear the duplicate flag.
Not elegant, but gets the job done.
Here's a funny way to do it:
SET #rowid := 0;
UPDATE mytable
SET duplicate = (rowid = #rowid),
rowid = (#rowid:=rowid)
ORDER BY rowid, created_date;
First set a user variable to zero, assuming this is less than any rowid in your table.
Then use the MySQL UPDATE...ORDER BY feature to ensure that the rows are updated in order by rowid, then by created_date.
For each row, if the current rowid is not equal to the user variable #rowid, set duplicate to 0 (false). This will be true only on the first row encountered with a given value for rowid.
Then add a dummy set of rowid to its own value, setting #rowid to that value as a side effect.
As you UPDATE the next row, if it's a duplicate of the previous row, rowid will be equal to the user variable #rowid, and therefore duplicate will be set to 1 (true).
Edit: Now I have tested this, and I corrected a mistake in the line that sets duplicate.
Here's another way to do it, using MySQL's multi-table UPDATE syntax:
UPDATE mytable m1
JOIN mytable m2 ON (m1.rowid = m2.rowid AND m1.created_date < m2.created_date)
SET m2.duplicate = 1;
I don't know the MySQL syntax, but in PLSQL you just do:
UPDATE t1
SET duplicate = 1
FROM MyTable t1
WHERE rowid != (
SELECT TOP 1 rowid FROM MyTable t2
WHERE t2.fingerprint = t1.fingerprint ORDER BY created_date DESC
)
That may have some syntax errors, as I'm just typing off the cuff/not able to test it, but that's the gist of it.
MySQL version (not tested):
UPDATE t1
SET duplicate = 1
FROM MyTable t1
WHERE rowid != (
SELECT rowid FROM MyTable t2
WHERE t2.fingerprint = t1.fingerprint
ORDER BY created_date DESC
LIMIT 1
)
Untested...
UPDATE TheAnonymousTable
SET duplicate = TRUE
WHERE rowid NOT IN
(SELECT rowid
FROM (SELECT MIN(created_date) AS created_date, fingerprint
FROM TheAnonymousTable
GROUP BY fingerprint
) AS M,
TheAnonymousTable AS T
WHERE M.created_date = T.created_date
AND M.fingerprint = T.fingerprint
);
The logic is that the innermost query returns the earliest created_date for each distinct fingerprint as table alias M. The middle query determines the rowid value for each of those rows; it is a nuisance to have to do this (but necessary), and the code assumes that you won't get two records for the same fingerprint and timestamp. This gives you the rowid for the earlist record for each separate fingerprint. Then the outer query (the UPDATE) sets the 'duplicate' flag on all those rows where the rowid is not one of the earliest rows.
Some DBMS may be unhappy about doing (nested) sub-queries on the table being updated.