Using the "insert ignore" statement is a way to let MySQL insert data from a dataset which may contain duplicate constraints to existing data, and simply skip the duplicate row.
Sounds like a great way to screw up data doesn't it? Should not be used unless you really know what is going on.
Ok, in MySQL we can do this.
mysql> insert ignore into a select * from b;But can this be done in Oracle without to much fuss? After a discussion on IRC a guy asked why can't we simply use the merge statement?
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
Records: 2 Duplicates: 1 Warnings: 0
Well we can and it is probably a quite good suggestion if you *really* want to ditch those dupe rows.
-- So what do we got?Looks ok.
SQL> select * from a;
A B
---------- ----------
1 2
2 3
SQL> select * from b;
A B
---------- ----------
1 3
3 4
SQL> merge into a using b on (a.a=b.a)
when not matched then insert values (b.a,b.b);
1 row merged.
SQL> select * from a;
A B
---------- ----------
1 2
2 3
3 4
SQL>
-- Let's rollback that and have a look at the exeuction plan.
SQL> rollback;
Rollback complete.
SQL> set autotrace on
SQL> merge into a using b on (a.a=b.a)
when not matched then insert values (b.a,b.b);
1 row merged.
Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
Plan hash value: 1973318225
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation | Name | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| 0 | MERGE STATEMENT | | 2 | 64 | 7 (15)| 00:00:01 |
| 1 | MERGE | A | | | | |
| 2 | VIEW | | | | | |
|* 3 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 2 | 64 | 7 (15)| 00:00:01 |
| 4 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| B | 2 | 52 | 3 (0)| 00:00:01 |
| 5 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| A | 2 | 12 | 3 (0)| 00:00:01 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------
3 - access("A"."A"(+)="B"."A")
Note
-----
- dynamic sampling used for this statement
Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
0 recursive calls
5 db block gets
15 consistent gets
0 physical reads
0 redo size
819 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
778 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
4 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
1 sorts (memory)
0 sorts (disk)
1 rows processed
SQL>
