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An SQL UPDATE statement changes the data of one or more records in a table. Either all the rows can be updated, or a subset may be chosen using a condition. The UPDATE statement has the following form: [1] UPDATE table_name SET column_name = value [, column_name = value ...] [WHERE condition]
Each column in an SQL table declares the type(s) that column may contain. ANSI SQL includes the following data types. [14] Character strings and national character strings. CHARACTER(n) (or CHAR(n)): fixed-width n-character string, padded with spaces as needed; CHARACTER VARYING(n) (or VARCHAR(n)): variable-width string with a maximum size of n ...
Additionally there is a single-row version, UPDATE OR INSERT INTO tablename (columns) VALUES (values) [MATCHING (columns)], but the latter does not give you the option to take different actions on insert versus update (e.g. setting a new sequence value only for new rows, not for existing ones.)
In SQL, the data manipulation language comprises the SQL-data change statements, [3] which modify stored data but not the schema or database objects. Manipulation of persistent database objects, e.g., tables or stored procedures, via the SQL schema statements, [3] rather than the data stored within them, is considered to be part of a separate data definition language (DDL).
Indexes are useful for many applications but come with some limitations. Consider the following SQL statement: SELECT first_name FROM people WHERE last_name = 'Smith';. To process this statement without an index the database software must look at the last_name column on every row in the table (this is known as a full table scan).
The SELECT statement has many optional clauses: SELECT list is the list of columns or SQL expressions to be returned by the query. This is approximately the relational algebra projection operation. AS optionally provides an alias for each column or expression in the SELECT list. This is the relational algebra rename operation.
The SQL:2003 standard defines positioned update and positioned delete SQL statements for that purpose. Such statements do not use a regular WHERE clause with predicates. Instead, a cursor identifies the row. The cursor must be opened and already positioned on a row by means of FETCH statement. UPDATE table_name SET ...
SQL allows triggers to fire on updates to specific columns; As of version 9.0 of PostgreSQL this feature is also implemented in PostgreSQL. The standard allows the execution of a number of SQL statements other than SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, such as CREATE TABLE as the triggered action. This can be done through creating a stored procedure or ...