Is there a way to use oracle merge to insert and delete but not update?
I have a table representing a set of values related to a single row in another table. I could change the set of values by deleting them all and adding back the new set, or by selectively deleting some and adding others, but I am interested in making it a single statement if possible.
Here is a working example with update. In order to make this work, I had to add dummy
so that a column was available to update that was not in the on
condition. Is there some way to only delete and insert without a dummy column to update?
No column from the on
condition may be in the update set
list even if it is not actually updated.
create table every_value ( the_value varchar2(32) );
create table paired_value ( the_id number, a_value varchar2(32) , dummy number default 0 );
-- the_id is a foreign_key to a row in another table
insert into every_value ( the_value ) values ( 'aaa' );
insert into every_value ( the_value ) values ( 'abc' );
insert into every_value ( the_value ) values ( 'ace' );
insert into every_value ( the_value ) values ( 'adg' );
insert into every_value ( the_value ) values ( 'aei' );
insert into every_value ( the_value ) values ( 'afk' );
-- pair ace and afk with id 3
merge into paired_value p using every_value e
on ( p.the_id = 3 and p.a_value = e.the_value )
when matched then update set dummy=dummy+1
delete where a_value not in ('ace','afk')
when not matched then insert (the_id,a_value)
values (3,e.the_value)
where e.the_value in ('ace','afk');
-- pair ace and aei with id 3
-- should remove afk, add aei, do nothing with ace
merge into paired_value p using every_value e
on ( p.the_id = 3 and p.a_value = e.the_value )
when matched then update set dummy = dummy+1
delete where a_value not in ('ace','aei')
when not matched then insert (the_id,a_value)
values (3,e.the_value)
where e.the_value in ('ace','aei');
-- pair aaa and adg with id 4
merge into paired_value p using every_value e
on ( p.the_id = 4 and p.a_value = e.the_value )
when matched then update set dummy = dummy+1
delete where a_value not in ('aaa','adg')
when not matched then insert (the_id,a_value)
values (4,e.the_value)
where e.the_value in ('aaa','adg');
select * from paired_value;
I have tried this in oracle 10g and, with this sqlfiddle, oracle 11g.