Re: MERGE vs REPLACE - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Bruce Momjian
Subject Re: MERGE vs REPLACE
Date
Msg-id 200511180311.jAI3BXS10887@candle.pha.pa.us
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: MERGE vs REPLACE  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
List pgsql-hackers
Tom Lane wrote:
> Csaba Nagy <nagy@ecircle-ag.com> writes:
> > OK, in this case I don't care about either MERGE or REPLACE, but for an
> > UPSERT which does the locking :-)
> 
> This is exactly the point --- pretty much nobody has come to us and
> asked for a feature that does what Peter and Martijn say MERGE does.
> (I haven't bothered to look at the 2003 spec, I'm assuming they read it
> correctly.)  What we *have* been asked for, over and over, is an
> insert-or-update feature that's not so tedious and inefficient as the
> savepoint-insert-rollback-update kluge.  That's what we ought to be
> concentrating on providing.

I am confused over the various options.  I have heard these syntaxes:
SQL2003 MERGEMySQL REPLACE    http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/replace.htmlMySQL INSERT VIOLATION ...UPSERT

So it seems MERGE does not have the use-case we most need, though it can
be bent to do it.  (Given their MATCH syntax, it doesn't seem there is
any logic that it tries INSERT first).

Looking at the MySQL URL above, REPLACE has three possible syntaxes with
normal (DELETE), SET (UPDATE), and SELECT.  Is this the direction we
need to go?  I don't like INSERT ... VIOLATION because I would like a
new keyword for this.  Is UPSERT the same as REPLACE?  Should we use
UPSERT instead?
--  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610)
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