As I'm coming from Microsoft SQL Server environment, working with MySQL is constantly surprising me in many ways, both good and bad :) In contrast to MS SQL I need to focus significantly more on the performance of our queries and be prepared that everything is not as easy as in MS SQL world :)

Here are just a couple of interesting MySQL features I found useful for my work. This time they are all related to inserting or updating a data.

INSERT IGNORE

A row that duplicates an existing unique index or primary key is ignored and no warning generated.

!!!!! Do not use when inserting into table with auto generated primary key column (either single or composite). It will still generate an id but never insert it.

INSERT ON DUPLICATE UPDATE

Similar to INSERT IGNORE but moreover one can specify an update clause like:

insert into User (col1, col2, col3) values (v1, v2, v3) on duplicate update col3 = current_timestamp()

REPLACE (= insert or delete + insert)

If there is no such row in the table it is inserted. If it already exists, it is deleted first and then reinserted.

INSERT DELAYED

Useful for clients that cannot wait until insert is done. Server confirms the query and then it is put into the queue until a table is not used by other processes. It is obviously slower than a normal INSERT and also these rows until inserted are stored in the memory only. So, there is a higher chance of losing them.

INSERT LOW_PRIORITY

Low_priority insert execution is delayed until no other clients are reading from the table. It is possible that such an insert will wait for a long time (theoretically forever :) )

Examples

create table if not exists tmp_test_peter 
(
ID int unsigned not null primary key auto_increment,
Record varchar(100) character set utf8,
ModifiedDate datetime not null default current_timestamp(),
unique index un_Record (Record)
);

INSERT IGNORE

insert into tmp_test_peter (Record) values ('record 1');
insert into tmp_test_peter (Record) values ('record 1');

As expected we will get:

Error Code: 1062. Duplicate entry 'record 1' for key 'un_Record'

One more try with IGNORE now.

insert IGNORE into tmp_test_peter (Record) values ('record 1');
0 row(s) affected

No records inserted but also no errors.

Let's run it a couple of more times:

insert IGNORE into tmp_test_peter (Record) values ('record 1');
insert IGNORE into tmp_test_peter (Record) values ('record 1');
insert IGNORE into tmp_test_peter (Record) values ('record 1');
insert IGNORE into tmp_test_peter (Record) values ('record 1');

Still ok :) But what if we run another insert with different value:

insert IGNORE into tmp_test_peter (Record) values ('record 2');
select * from tmp_test_peter

No errors, a row inserted but let's select from the table.

You see it? Newly inserted record has an ID much higher than expected meaning all these ignored inserts incremented identity column in the table!

INSERT ON DUPLICATE UPDATE

insert into tmp_test_peter (Record)
values ('record 1')
on duplicate key update ModifiedDate = current_timestamp()

select * from tmp_test_peter

REPLACE

replace into tmp_test_peter (Record) values ('record 3');
select * from tmp_test_peter

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