Update multiple columns

This is something I knew somewhere in the back of my head, but had forgotten about until now.

When you want to update multiple columns in a single SQL statement based on a sub query you can of course duplicate this query for every column you want to update. But this violates the SPOD (Single Point Of Definition) ‘rule’.

As an example I have the following requirement:

Add two columns to the EMP table containing the name and job of the manager and fill these columns with the right values.

First of all I need to add the columns to the table, with is easy:

alter table emp add (mgr_name varchar2(10)
                    ,mgr_job varchar2(9)
                    )

Then comes the ‘tricky’ part. I can of course fill up these columns in separate statements, like this:

update emp e
   set e.mgr_name = (select m.ename
                       from emp m
                      where 1=1
                        and m.empno = e.mgr)
 where 1=1
   and e.mgr is not null
/
update emp e
   set e.mgr_job = (select m.job
                       from emp m
                      where 1=1
                        and m.empno = e.mgr)
 where 1=1
   and e.mgr is not null
/

But this implies two roundtrips from the client to the database. These statements can be combined into a single one:

update emp e
   set e.mgr_name = (select m.ename
                       from emp m
                      where 1=1
                        and m.empno = e.mgr)
     , e.mgr_job = (select m.job
                       from emp m
                      where 1=1
                        and m.empno = e.mgr)
 where 1=1
   and e.mgr is not null
/

But there is an easier, and more elegant way to do this:

update emp e
   set (e.mgr_name, e.mgr_job) = (select m.ename, m.job
                                   from emp m
                                  where 1=1
                                    and m.empno = e.mgr)
 where 1=1
   and e.mgr is not null
/

This is of course a pretty simple example, but you can imagine what would happen if you want to update more columns, create a complex sub query or worse, make modifications to the predicates. You are more than likely going to forget one or more sub queries giving you an undesired result.

update December 25th 2015: Find a demonstration script on LiveSQL

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