Question

I have an table at my SQLSERVER(2008R2) called “Clients” , it has ClientID and Address.
I’d like to make a query/SP which does the following:

1. Recieves a list of addresses.
2. Deletes the records with these address.
3. Returns a list of the addresses that can’t be deleted(row not found, etc).
4. Returns the number of deleted rows.

My application is C#-ASP.NET based application.
I’ve thought of the following solutions:

1. Make an SP that recieves a list of addresses, and then tries to delete them, and if it can’t delete it , to add it to some sort of array/list. – my problem with this solution is that I’m not familiar with how lists works at SQLSERVER(2008R2).

2. Work with DataTable , select the data I need from the DB, and delete it with SqlDataAdapter, and check whats the rows which have changed via RowState.

Example of my DataBase:

Client ID    Address

111111111  'foo st. 2'

222222222  'foo bld 1'

333333333  'foo rd 22'

444444444  'foo st. 1'

Example of the input:

input list{'foo st. 2','foo bld 1','foo st 22','foo st 1'} – the last two items aren’t exist at the table above, So i would like my SP (or any other method of solution) to return:

'Deleted rows: 2' //thats not a problem
'list of the records which weren't removed: {'foo st 22','foo st 1'} //thats a problem..

Hope I made myself as clear as possible.

Answer 1

I don’t think you can find which items aren’t deleted by a delete statement in sql. Firstly you need a way to split your string by comma’s. I’d use a table function like what’s suggested in this question

once you have that then you need to select before you delete into a temp table, then delete the records that are there, then return the missing records:

DECLARE @SplitString TABLE
(
    value varchar(MAX)
)

DECLARE @MissingRecords TABLE
(
    value varchar(MAX)
)


INSERT INTO @SplitString
SELECT  part
FROM    dbo.fSplitString('foo st 22, foo st 1', ',')



SELECT  value
FROM    @SplitString
WHERE   value NOT IN (  SELECT Address
                        FROM TableName
                     )

DELETE  FROM TableName
WHERE   Address IN (SELECT Value FROM @SplitString)

SELECT  *
FROM    @MissingRecords