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Matt Caminiti
3,466 PointsAssigning ID's to Multiple Values
Hello All!
I was wondering is there a way to mass update tables made in a database so that you assign one instance of a particular value with an ID. Specifically, is there a way to do this using SQL.
Lets say I had a database with two tables and each table has a name column. Am I able to update both tables' name column where if a specific name pops up i can give it the same ID value in both tables. (I know I could join the tables based on name but i'd rather join on an int rather than a string value).
Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
1 Answer
Livia Galeazzi
Java Web Development Techdegree Graduate 21,083 PointsThe ID is always generated automatically in a production environment. I'm assuming here the ID is the table's primary key. It needs to be unique or everything breaks. What happens if the same name exists twice in the table? Then you end up with two identical primary keys in your table and a corrupted database. That's why you have ID columns as primary key at all. Trying to overwrite the ID column is a very, very bad idea.
But technically you can just update the ID column like any other column using an update statement.