insert if not exists oracle

Question

I need to be able to run an Oracle query which goes to insert a number of rows, but it also checks to see if a primary key exists and if it does, then it skips that insert.

Answer 1

This only inserts if the item to be inserted is not already present.

Works the same as:

if not exists (...) insert ... 

in T-SQL

insert into destination (DESTINATIONABBREV) 
  select 'xyz' from dual 
  left outer join destination d on d.destinationabbrev = 'xyz' 
  where d.destinationid is null;

may not be pretty, but it's handy :)