Charles Kincaid (1/29/2008)
I'm not a big fan of MERGE. I much prefer REPLACE INTO. You code everything one way. It looks just like a regular INSERT statement except for the word REPLACE. The match is done on the primary key (you don't use auto number fields as primary key, right?). Rows affected comes back 1 if it worked, 0 otherwise. Neat and clean.If I know that I want to update I use UPDATE and check Rows Affected. If I know this is a new record I use INSERT and let the collision prevent duplicates. There are times when I have to update and/or insert a stack of data and I don't want to mess around about it. REPLACE INTO cuts my work load.
REPLACE INTO would be great, but it doesn't exist in SQL Server. This is what MERGE is supposed to do.
Jack Corbett
Consultant - Straight Path Solutions
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