An insert example

Delete with a cursor contains an example of the DELETE statement whose purpose is to look for and delete duplicate rows of a table. A better way to perform this task is to select the desired rows instead of deleting the undesired ones. The code in the following Informix® ESQL/C example shows one way to do this task:

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
   long last_ord = 1;
   struct {
      long int o_num;
      date     o_date;
      long     c_num;
      char     o_shipinst[40];
      char     o_backlog;
      char     o_po[10];
      date     o_shipdate;
      decimal  o_shipwt;
      decimal  o_shipchg;
      date     o_paiddate;
      } ord_row;
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

EXEC SQL BEGIN WORK;
EXEC SQL INSERT INTO new_orders
   SELECT * FROM orders main
      WHERE 1 = (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM orders minor
         WHERE main.order_num = minor.order_num);
EXEC SQL COMMIT WORK;

EXEC SQL DECLARE dup_row CURSOR FOR
   SELECT * FROM orders main INTO :ord_row
      WHERE 1 < (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM orders minor
         WHERE main.order_num = minor.order_num)
      ORDER BY order_date;
EXEC SQL DECLARE ins_row CURSOR FOR
   INSERT INTO new_orders VALUES (:ord_row);

EXEC SQL BEGIN WORK;
EXEC SQL OPEN ins_row;
EXEC SQL OPEN dup_row;
while(SQLCODE == 0)
{
   EXEC SQL FETCH dup_row;
   if(SQLCODE == 0)
   {
      if(ord_row.o_num != last_ord)
         EXEC SQL PUT ins_row;
      last_ord = ord_row.o_num
      continue;
   }
   break;
}
if(SQLCODE != 0 && SQLCODE != 100)
   EXEC SQL ROLLBACK WORK;
else
   EXEC SQL COMMIT WORK;
EXEC SQL CLOSE ins_row;
EXEC SQL CLOSE dup_row;

This example begins with an ordinary INSERT statement, which finds all the nonduplicated rows of the table and inserts them into another table, presumably created before the program started. That action leaves only the duplicate rows. (In the demonstration database, the orders table has a unique index and cannot have duplicate rows. Assume that this example deals with some other database.)

The code in the previous example then declares two cursors. The first, called dup_row, returns the duplicate rows in the table. Because dup_row is for input only, it can use the ORDER BY clause to impose some order on the duplicates other than the physical record order used in the example on page Delete with a cursor. In this example, the duplicate rows are ordered by their dates (the oldest one remains), but you can use any other order based on the data.

The second cursor, ins_row, is an insert cursor. This cursor takes advantage of the ability to use a C structure, ord_row, to supply values for all columns in the row.

The remainder of the code examines the rows that are returned through dup_row. It inserts the first one from each group of duplicates into the new table and disregards the rest.

For the sake of brevity, the preceding example uses the simplest kind of error handling. If an error occurs before all rows have been processed, the sample code rolls back the active transaction.