Question

I need to write an Insert, Update Trigger on table A which will delete all rows from table B whose one column (say Desc) has values like the value inserted/updated in the table A’s column (say Col1). How would I go around writing it so that I can handle both Update and Insert cases. How would I determine if the trigger is executed for an update or insert.

Answer 1

Triggers have special INSERTED and DELETED tables to track "before" and "after" data. So you can use something like IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM DELETED) to detect an update. You only have rows in DELETED on update, but there are always rows in INSERTED.

Look for "inserted" in CREATE TRIGGER.

Edit, 23 Nov 2011

After comment, this answer is only for INSERTED and UPDATED triggers.
Obviously, DELETE triggers can not have "always rows in INSERTED" as I said above