LinLog

Last time, I was bitching about doing an update based on a select from the same table in MySQL. Well, after reading the chapter on "Views, Derived Tables, Materialized Tables, and Temporary Tables" in SQL for Smarties, followed by a search of the MySQL documentation, I figured out a way around that annoying limitation.

If you recall from last time, the query that wasn't working looked something like this:

mysql> UPDATE test_tbl SET val2 = (SELECT val2 FROM test_tbl WHERE val1 = 1) WHERE val1 = 3;
ERROR 1093 (HY000): You can't specify target table 'test_tbl' for update in FROM clause

Basically, this is doing an update and setting a column to the value of a scalar subquery. The catch is that, in MySQL, this doesn't work when the select and update are on the same table.

Well, the trick is that you have to make make MySQL materialize the subquery. I actually decided to try that after reading Joe Celko's story about views in the early days of DB2. At the time, it was using inline-expansion for views, which would sometimes generate invalid SQL. Thus it was sometimes necessary to make the database materialize the view.

Well, I figured the same thing might apply here. And so, after a little inspiration from the MySQL manual, here's a working version of the same query:

UPDATE test_tbl SET val2 = (SELECT val2 FROM (SELECT val2 FROM test_tbl AS tmp1 WHERE val1=1) AS tmp2) WHERE val1 = 3;

I stole the sub-subquery idea from the MySQL manual. It is, of course, completely gratuitous from a logical standpoint, but it forces MySQL to materialize the subquery. That, in turn, allows us to bypass the "no updating the same table" restriction, since we're technically selecting from a temporary table.

So there you have it! I was wrong about not being able to do that. It just takes a little finagling. Of course, I still think MySQL should be smart enough to make a temporary table on its own, but at least the end result is still possible.