Thread: Update Mass Data in Field?

I'm new to SQL so I'm looking for a way to change several email
addresses with one command. For example everyone has a 'holyghost.org'
domain and I need to change a few 100 email addresses in the field
'emp_email'. I need to UPDATE employees table which has a COLUMN
'emp_email' and change %holyghost.org to %ghostsoftware.com.

I tried:

UPDATE employees SET emp_email = '%ghostsoftware.com' WHERE emp_email
LIKE '%holyghost.org';

It didn't update anything when I ran the command. Does anyone know how
I need to correct my SQL statement above to change everyone's email
address?

On 01/26/2012 03:59 PM, Carlos Mennens wrote:
> I'm new to SQL so I'm looking for a way to change several email
> addresses with one command. For example everyone has a 'holyghost.org'
> domain and I need to change a few 100 email addresses in the field
> 'emp_email'. I need to UPDATE employees table which has a COLUMN
> 'emp_email' and change %holyghost.org to %ghostsoftware.com.
>
> I tried:
>
> UPDATE employees SET emp_email = '%ghostsoftware.com' WHERE emp_email
> LIKE '%holyghost.org';
>
> It didn't update anything when I ran the command. Does anyone know how
> I need to correct my SQL statement above to change everyone's email
> address?
>

...set emp_email = regexp_replace(emp_email, '@holyghost.org$', 
'@ghostingsoftware.org') where emp_email ~ '@holyghost.org$'...

This is using the regular expression match and regexp_replace to ensure 
that the pattern is anchored at the end of the field and includes the 
"@" sign in the expression to avoid accidentally matching something like 
...@theholyghost.org.

You can always do a select of the emp_email alongside the replacement 
expression to be sure it will do what you want before actually updating 
your database.

Cheers,
Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-sql-owner@postgresql.org [mailto:pgsql-sql-owner@postgresql.org]
On Behalf Of Carlos Mennens
Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2012 6:59 PM
To: PostgreSQL (SQL)
Subject: [SQL] Update Mass Data in Field?

I'm new to SQL so I'm looking for a way to change several email addresses
with one command. For example everyone has a 'holyghost.org'
domain and I need to change a few 100 email addresses in the field
'emp_email'. I need to UPDATE employees table which has a COLUMN 'emp_email'
and change %holyghost.org to %ghostsoftware.com.

I tried:

UPDATE employees SET emp_email = '%ghostsoftware.com' WHERE emp_email LIKE
'%holyghost.org';

It didn't update anything when I ran the command. Does anyone know how I
need to correct my SQL statement above to change everyone's email address?

------------------------------------------------

Like Steve said, use the "regexp_replace" function.  However, I am concerned
that nothing updated when you executed the above.  What you should have seen
happen is that EVERY email address ending with "holyghost.org" became
changed to the literal value "%ghostsoftware.com" - which obviously is not
an e-mail address - and the original "holyghost.org" email address would
have been gone beyond easy recovery.

Takeaway: test update queries on sample data (or at least within a
transaction block) and confirm your results before executing against live
data (or committing the transaction).

David J.