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SQL UPDATE Statement

yeeit

Waifu Economist
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When you insert record to your table there are some cases that you need to modify the data. Or you may want to update it to the latest record.

The SQL update is there to help us modify the existing values of the table, the SQL update statement used the same column name as insert statement and the new value that you want to placed and the table name to update the data successfully.

The syntax of SQL update statement is as follows:

  1. UPDATE

    TABLE_NAME
  2. SET

    column1=

    value1,

    column2=

    value2,...
  3. WHERE

    COLUMN

    =

    VALUE

Consider the same table we had in previous tutorials.

Users:

Firstname

Lastname

Age

Maritalstatus

Country

John

Smith

40

Married

Usa

Mathew

Simon

30

Married

UK

Bill

Steve

20

Single

Usa

Amanda

Rogers

28

Married

Germany

Steve

Hills

30

Single

france

Tom

Jerry

20

Single

USA

Bill

Josh

30

Married

UK

Let’s say that john smith has migrated from USA to Australia then we want to update his country, then we write the SQL statement as:

UPDATE

Users SET

Country=

”Australia” WHERE

(

Firstname=

”John” AND

Lastname=

”Smith”)

The table will be updated and will change to:

Firstname

Lastname

Age

Maritalstatus

Country

John

Smith

40

Married

Australia

Mathew

Simon

30

Married

UK

Bill

Steve

20

Single

Usa

Amanda

Rogers

28

Married

Germany

Steve

Hills

30

Single

france

Tom

Jerry

20

Single

USA

Bill

Josh

30

Married

UK

Now consider multiple update, we want to change the age and marital status of Bill in the table.

NOTE: We have 2 persons named as Bill both will be updated.

UPDATE

Users SET

age=

”50

”,

Maritalstatus=

”Married” WHERE

Firstname=

”Bill”

The table is modified as follows:

Firstname

Lastname

Age

Maritalstatus

Country

John

Smith

40

Married

Australia

Mathew

Simon

30

Married

UK

Bill

Steve

50

Married

Usa

Amanda

Rogers

28

Married

Germany

Steve

Hills

30

Single

france

Tom

Jerry

20

Single

USA

Bill

Josh

50

Married

UK

So it is always a good idea to select rows with primary keys, or unique IDs to avoid unwanted data changes.

If we accidently or somehow forgot to type the where clause in the update query then all the data will be updated with the value you provide.

For example:

UPDATE

Users SET

Age=

”10

”

The result would be:

Firstname

Lastname

Age

Maritalstatus

Country

John

Smith

10

Married

Australia

Mathew

Simon

10

Married

UK

Bill

Steve

10

Married

Usa

Amanda

Rogers

10

Married

Germany

Steve

Hills

10

Single

france

Tom

Jerry

10

Single

USA

Bill

Josh

10

Married

UK

So make sure that you always use the where clause to avoid unnecessary lose of data.

 

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