Summary

This chapter covered data modification within SQL Server. You modify most data using the three SQL DML statements: INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE. Although you can typically think of INSERT as affecting only one row, SQL Server provides several forms of INSERT that can insert an entire result set at once. In addition, SQL Server offers utilities and interfaces for fast bulk loading of data. UPDATE and DELETE operations can be searched operations, bringing to bear all the power of the SQL query language to specify which rows are to be modified.

We also looked at some internal considerations, including the placement of rows in tables, logging, locking, and space usage. We discussed several possible update methods , along with examples illustrating the various update strategies.

Next we'll study Transact-SQL extensions, which offer the kind of power normally associated with programming languages.