Adaikalavan Ramasamy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on 26/07/2004
16:31:44:
> But I have another related question. How do I write an IF ELSE command
> with MYSQL. In this context, I want it to return myID if the record
> already exists, otherwise insert into database.
>
> This naive syntax does not work :
> IF EXISTS (SELECT myID FROM tb WHERE firstname='Jack' AND
> lastname='Doe') ELSE (INSERT INTO tb(firstname, lastname) VALUES
> ('Jack', 'Doe');
I don't think it is possible. There is a fairly serious architectural
split in SQL between SELECT, which is read-only and returns a two
dimensional table of results, and UPDATE (and its twins REPLACE and
INSERT), which update the database and return a single integer, usually
the count of rows updated. The command you are trying to do combines both.
The transport level would therefore not know whether to carry a
SELECT-style reply or an UPDATE-style reply.
This is a limitation on SQL, rather than MySQL. You have to do two
operations.
Alec
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