Of course nobody should be changing the primary key on the table -- but that is exactly what triggers are supposed to be for (in part), is to keep people from doing things they shouldn't do. It's a trivial task in Oracle or MySQL to write a trigger that intercepts changes to primary keys and stops them, but not at all easy in SQL Server.
What you of course would love to be able to do would be to simply do something like this:
if exists
(
select *
from inserted changed
join deleted old
where changed.rowID = old.rowID
and changed.id != old.id
)
... [roll it all back]
Which is why people go out googling for the SQL Server equivalent of ROWID. Well, SQL Server doesn't have it; so you have to come up with another approach.
A fast, but sadly not bombproof, version is to write an instead of update trigger that looks to see whether any of the inserted rows have a primary key not found in the updated table or vice versa. This would catch MOST, but not all, of the errors:
if exists
(
select *
from inserted lost
left join updated match
on match.id = lost.id
where match.id is null
union
select *
from deleted new
left join inserted match
on match.id = new.id
where match.id is null
)
-- roll it all back
But this still doesn't catch an update like...
update myTable
set id = case
when id = 1 then 2
when id = 2 then 1
else id
end
Now, I've tried making the assumption that the inserted and deleted tables are ordered in such a way that cursoring through the inserted and deleted tables simultaneously will give you properly matching rows. And this APPEARS to work. In effect you turn the trigger into the equivalent of the for-each-row triggers available in Oracle and mandatory in MySQL...but I would imagine the performance will be bad on massive updates since this is not native behavior to SQL Server. Also it depends upon an assumption that I can't actually find documented anywhere and so am reluctant to depend on. But code structured that way APPEARS to work properly on my SQL Server 2008 R2 installation. The script at the end of this post highlights both the behavior of the fast-but-not-bombproof solution and the behavior of the second, pseudo-Oracle solution.
If anybody could point me to someplace where my assumption is documented and guaranteed by Microsoft I'd be a very grateful guy...
begin try
drop table kpTest;
end try
begin catch
end catch
go
create table kpTest( id int primary key, name nvarchar(10) )
go
begin try
drop trigger kpTest_ioU;
end try
begin catch
end catch
go
create trigger kpTest_ioU on kpTest
instead of update
as
begin
if exists
(
select *
from inserted lost
left join deleted match
on match.id = lost.id
where match.id is null
union
select *
from deleted new
left join inserted match
on match.id = new.id
where match.id is null
)
raisError( 'Changed primary key', 16, 1 )
else
update kpTest
set name = i.name
from kpTest
join inserted i
on i.id = kpTest.id
;
end
go
insert into kpTest( id, name ) values( 0, 'zero' );
insert into kpTest( id, name ) values( 1, 'one' );
insert into kpTest( id, name ) values( 2, 'two' );
insert into kpTest( id, name ) values( 3, 'three' );
select * from kpTest;
/*
0 zero
1 one
2 two
3 three
*/
-- This throws an error, appropriately
update kpTest set id = 5, name = 'FIVE' where id = 1
go
select * from kpTest;
/*
0 zero
1 one
2 two
3 three
*/
-- This allows the change, inappropriately
update kpTest
set id = case
when id = 1 then 2
when id = 2 then 1
else id
end
, name = UPPER( name )
go
select * from kpTest
/*
0 ZERO
1 TWO -- WRONG WRONG WRONG
2 ONE -- WRONG WRONG WRONG
3 THREE
*/
-- Put it back
update kpTest
set id = case
when id = 1 then 2
when id = 2 then 1
else id
end
, name = LOWER( name )
go
select * from kpTest;
/*
0 zero
1 one
2 two
3 three
*/
drop trigger kpTest_ioU
go
create trigger kpTest_ioU on kpTest
instead of update
as
begin
declare newIDs cursor for select id, name from inserted;
declare oldIDs cursor for select id from deleted;
declare @thisOldID int;
declare @thisNewID int;
declare @thisNewName nvarchar(10);
declare @errorFound int;
set @errorFound = 0;
open newIDs;
open oldIDs;
fetch newIDs into @thisNewID, @thisNewName;
fetch oldIDs into @thisOldID;
while @@FETCH_STATUS = 0 and @errorFound = 0
begin
if @thisNewID != @thisOldID
begin
set @errorFound = 1;
close newIDs;
deallocate newIDs;
close oldIDs;
deallocate oldIDs;
raisError( 'Primary key changed', 16, 1 );
end
else
begin
update kpTest
set name = @thisNewName
where id = @thisNewID
;
fetch newIDs into @thisNewID, @thisNewName;
fetch oldIDs into @thisOldID;
end
end;
if @errorFound = 0
begin
close newIDs;
deallocate newIDs;
close oldIDs;
deallocate oldIDs;
end
end
go
-- Succeeds, appropriately
update kpTest
set name = UPPER( name )
go
select * from kpTest;
/*
0 ZERO
1 ONE
2 TWO
3 THREE
*/
-- Succeeds, appropriately
update kpTest
set name = LOWER( name )
go
select * from kpTest;
/*
0 zero
1 one
2 two
3 three
*/
-- Fails, appropriately
update kpTest
set id = case
when id = 1 then 2
when id = 2 then 1
else id
end
go
select * from kpTest;
/*
0 zero
1 one
2 two
3 three
*/
-- Fails, appropriately
update kpTest
set id = id + 1
go
select * from kpTest;
/*
0 zero
1 one
2 two
3 three
*/
-- Succeeds, appropriately
update kpTest
set id = id, name = UPPER( name )
go
select * from kpTest;
/*
0 ZERO
1 ONE
2 TWO
3 THREE
*/
drop table kpTest
go
