Re: most idiomatic way to "update or insert"?

gsstark(at)mit(dot)edu (Greg Stark) writes:
> This happens most often when I have a list of items and have a UI that allows
> the user to edit the entire list and commit a whole new list in one action.
> It's much easier to simply delete the old list and insert the entire new list
> in a single query than to try to figure out which rows to delete and which to
> insert.

Right, but this is going to quit working for you as soon as foreign
key references are involved. For that matter, other types of
dependent objects will prevent this as well.

In other words, when your relational database actually becomes
relational :-)

I too was in the habit of the delete/insert as a lazy mans update on
simple schemad DBs.

HTH

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