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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-05T06:33:06+00:00

I have never used Case before and am not sure how to do this

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I have never used Case before and am not sure how to do this but we have had some issues doing a wholesale update because of addresses changing that are now coming in the data that did not used to. I am trying to use it as an if then statement but I am sure that I am doing wrong. I need to update addresses when a field is either empty or null. 

UPDATE    defendants_ALL_Fixed
SET              tiffAdd = tiffAdds.Add1, tiffZip = tiffAdds.Zip, tiffCity = tiffAdds.City, tiffState = tiffAdds.State
FROM         defendants_ALL_Fixed INNER JOIN
                      tiffAdds ON defendants_ALL_Fixed.tiff = tiffAdds.Tiff
WHERE     (defendants_ALL_Fixed.tiff = tiffAdds.Tiff)

I have tried wrapping that into a case statement such as:

SELECT
  a.tiffAdd
, CASE WHEN a.tiffAdd = '' THEN

UPDATE    defendants_ALL_Fixed
SET              tiffAdd = tiffAdds.Add1, tiffZip = tiffAdds.Zip, tiffCity = tiffAdds.City, tiffState = tiffAdds.State
FROM         defendants_ALL_Fixed INNER JOIN
                      tiffAdds ON defendants_ALL_Fixed.tiff = tiffAdds.Tiff
WHERE     (defendants_ALL_Fixed.tiff = tiffAdds.Tiff)

END
FROM defendants_ALL_Fixed a

Which did not work and I understand why it does not work but have no idea where to go from here and any help would be great. We only use this once a month to update data (about 1.5 million records) and the resources it uses is not at all relevant at this point.

Thanks.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Assuming i am understanding your question (i.e. only update defendants_ALL_Fixed fields with tiffAdds when the defendants_ALL_Fixed fields are blank), you could do this as follows (sticking with case):

    UPDATE  defendants_ALL_Fixed
SET     tiffAdd = CASE WHEN LTRIM(RTRIM(ISNULL(tiffAdd, ''))) = '' THEN tiffAdds.Add1
                       ELSE tiffAdd
                  END ,
        tiffZip = CASE WHEN LTRIM(RTRIM(ISNULL(tiffZip, ''))) = '' THEN tiffAdds.Zip
                       ELSE tiffZip
                  END ,
        tiffCity = CASE WHEN LTRIM(RTRIM(ISNULL(tiffCity, ''))) = '' THEN tiffAdds.City
                        ELSE tiffCity
                   END ,
        tiffState = CASE WHEN LTRIM(RTRIM(ISNULL(tiffState, ''))) = '' THEN tiffAdds.State
                         ELSE tiffState
                    END
FROM    defendants_ALL_Fixed
        INNER JOIN tiffAdds ON defendants_ALL_Fixed.tiff = tiffAdds.Tiff

    A simpler (or rather, easier to read) option is to do simple update statements based on a WHERE clause (one update statement per column):

    UPDATE  defendants_ALL_Fixed
SET     tiffAdd = tiffAdds.Add1
FROM    defendants_ALL_Fixed
        INNER JOIN tiffAdds ON defendants_ALL_Fixed.tiff = tiffAdds.Tiff
WHERE   ( LTRIM(RTRIM(ISNULL(tiffAdd, ''))) = '' )

    Edit 1: based on your comment, That would suggest you can just update all columns where tiffAdd = ”? i.e. 

    UPDATE  defendants_ALL_Fixed
SET     tiffAdd = tiffAdds.Add1 ,
        tiffZip = tiffAdds.Zip ,
        tiffCity = tiffAdds.City ,
        tiffState = tiffAdds.State
FROM    defendants_ALL_Fixed
        INNER JOIN tiffAdds ON defendants_ALL_Fixed.tiff = tiffAdds.Tiff
WHERE   LTRIM(RTRIM(ISNULL(tiffAdd, ''))) = ''
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