Question

I have two tables in a SQL Server 2008 environment with the following structure

Table1
- ID
- DescriptionID
- Description

Table2
- ID
- Description

Table1.DescriptionID maps to Table2.ID. However, I do not need it any more. I would like to do a bulk update to set the Description property of Table1 to the value associated with it in Table2. In other words I want to do something like this:

UPDATE
  [Table1] 
SET
  [Description]=(SELECT [Description] FROM [Table2] t2 WHERE t2.[ID]=Table1.DescriptionID)

However, I’m not sure if this is the appropriate approach. Can someone show me how to do this?

Answer 1

Your way is correct, and here is another way you can do it:

update      Table1
set         Description = t2.Description
from        Table1 t1
inner join  Table2 t2
on          t1.DescriptionID = t2.ID

The nested select is the long way of just doing a join.