Evening all,
Actually, it's night. About 11pm. My brain is shutting down and I need a bit of help so I can finish and go home :)
I have two tables - table a and table b.
I need to update a field in table a with the value from a field in table b when two other fields match. The tables don't have a unique id for each record :(
Basically, I want to do this:
update a
set importantField =
(select b.importantfield
from b
where a.matchfield = b.matchfield
and a.matchfield2 = b.matchfield2
)
where a.matchfield = b.matchfield
and a.matchfield2 = b.matchfield2
Or at least... I think that's what I want to do...
Can someone help me out, please?
You can do this via a join in the update:
Update a
Set a.importantField = b.importantField
From a Join b
On a.matchfield = b.matchfield
And a.matchfield2 = b.matchfield2
Use:
UPDATE TABLE_A
SET importantField = (SELECT b.importantfield
FROM TABLE_B b
WHERE b.matchfield = matchfield
AND b.matchfield2 = matchfield2)
SQL Server doesn't support table aliases on the table being updated, but the above is a correlated query - those fields without the table alias b
attached will serve values from TABLE_A
because it doesn't have an alias.
The only issue beyond that is if there are multiple b.importantfield
values for records with the matching records to TABLE_A. Use:
UPDATE TABLE_A
SET importantField = (SELECT TOP 1
b.importantfield
FROM TABLE_B b
WHERE b.matchfield = matchfield
AND b.matchfield2 = matchfield2)
..but you should use an ORDER BY
as well or you'll get any random b.importantfield
value.