Talk:Update (SQL)

Maybe the article does not reflect typical syntax from real databases. For example, this is valid in Microsoft SQL server:

UPDATE authors
SET state = 'ZZ' 
FROM (SELECT TOP 10 * FROM authors ORDER BY au_lname) AS t1
WHERE authors.au_id = t1.au_id

More info here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/tsqlref/ts_ua-uz_82n9.asp

This syntax would need quite a bit of explanation. In my view, it is not intuitive at all. What makes more sense is this:

UPDATE ( SELECT * FROM authors WHERE ... ) AS t1
SET    state = 'ZZ'

Here it is clear that the query determines the rows to be updated. SQL Server's syntax is not clear in this respect. I would propose to add such highly product-specific things here: Comparison of SQL syntax --Stolze 18:52, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with ignoring the MS and Sybase syntax is for complex update queries having to manually correlate both the set and where clause of the query quickly becomes a maintenance and readability hazard.