CODEWITHSUNDEEP
oracle-databaseupsert
user467384
user467384

Reputation: 1167

How to update/insert a table without creating a new table (temporary or otherwise)

Background: My team has an etl job that updates an aggregate table. Each row contains data for a particular date, but this row can and will get updated after the row date (which means any row can contain data from multiple jobs). This ETL job missed some data for one day last week and now I need to backfill it.

Problem: I have the missing data, and what I was planning on doing was dumping that data into a temporary table and then merging it with the agg table. That way I can deal with whether the ETL job already contains a row for that data (update) or whether a new row needs to be added (insert), but I don't have sufficient permissions to create a temp table, and I'd prefer not to involve the DBA.

Question: Can I do an insert/update sort of behavior without creating a temporary table (this is Oracle SQL by the way).

Edit: The data is coming from a tsv file.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 466

Answers (1)

APC
APC

Reputation: 146349

Why do you want to avoid involving the DBA? The DBA should have full knowledge of what's going on in the database, as they are ultimately responsible for the condition of the data within it. So you shouldn't be playing sneaky commando with them.

As you have a file of missing data, the easiest way to present it to the database is with an external table. This requires the creation of the table and probably a directory object as well. You will need the DBA's help with this task.

The only way to avoid creating database objects is to convert your TSV file into a series of DML statements. An IDE which supports regex and/or records macros will prove invaluable here. I like TextPad; other editors are available.

The DML statement for doing upserts in Oracle is the MERGE statement. The one thing you need to watch for is recency. Your missing data comes from last week. If a row exists it may have have been added or amended in the intervening period. You must write your MERGE statement so it does not overwrite more recent data with the older stuff. Hopefully your table has useful metadata columns such as DATE_CREATED and LAST_UPDATED.

Upvotes: 2

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