Question

I know the question of how to update multiple tables in SQL has been asked before and the common answer seems to be do them separately in a transaction.

However, the 2 columns I need to update have a foreign key so cannot be updated separately.

e.g.

Table1.a is a foreign key to Table2.a

One of the entries in the tables is wrong, e.g. both columns are ‘xxx’ and should be ‘yyy’

How do I update Table1.a and Table2.a to be ‘yyy’?

I know I could temp remove the key and replace but surely there’s another way.

Thanks

Answer 1

You can’t do the update simultaneously, however you can force SQL to do the update. You need to make sure your foreign keys have the referential triggered action ON UPDATE CASCADE

e.g.

ALTER TABLE YourTable
ADD CONSTRAINT FK_YourForeignKey
FOREIGN KEY (YourForeignKeyColumn) 
REFERENCES YourPrimaryTable (YourPrimaryKeyColumn) ON UPDATE CASCADE