Question
I have 2 tables. The following are just a stripped down version of these tables.
TableA
Id <pk> incrementing
Name varchar(50)
TableB
TableAId <pk> non incrementing
Name varchar(50)
Now these tables have a relationship to each other.
Scenario
User 1 comes to my site and does some actions(in this case adds rows to Table A). So I use a SqlBulkCopy all this data in Table A.
However I need to add the data also to Table B but I don't know the newly created Id's from Table A as SQLBulkCopy won't return these.
So I am thinking of having a stored procedure that finds all the id's that don't exist in Table B and then insert them in.
INSERT INTO TableB (TableAId , Name)
SELECT Id,Name FROM TableA as tableA
WHERE not exists( ...)
However this comes with a problem. A user at any time can delete something from TableB so if a user deletes say a row and then another user comes around or even the same user comes around and does something to Table A my stored procedure will bring back that deleted row in Table B. Since it will still exist in Table A but not Table B and thus satisfy the stored procedure condition.
So is there a better way of dealing with two tables that need to be updated when using bulk insert?
Accepted Answer
SQLBulkCopy complicates this so I'd consider using a staging table and an OUTPUT clause
Example, in a mixture of client pseudo code and SQL
create SQLConnection
Create #temptable
Bulkcopy to #temptable
Call proc on same SQLConnection
proc:
INSERT tableA (..)
OUTPUT INSERTED.key, .. INTO TableB
SELECT .. FROM #temptable
close connection
Notes:
temptable will be local to the connection and be isolated
- the writes to A and B will be atomic
- overlapping or later writes don't care about what happens later to A and B
- emphasising the last point, A and B will only ever be populated from the set of rows in #temptable
Alternative:
Add another column to A and B called sessionid and use that to identify row batches.
Popular Answer
Just as an alternative solution you could use database triggers to update the second table.