What is USING in SQL Server 2008 MERGE syntax?

Question

Jacob asked the perfect question: give me the MERGE syntax.

Every answer out there immediately jumps to the most complicated case they can think of; obscuring the sy

Answer 1

A merge has a table source and a target table. This introduces the source table (which need not be an actual physical table, just a result set).

The grammar is indicated in your question. To merge from another table or view use

MERGE 
   Users
USING SomeOtherTableName AS foo /*Alias is optional*/
ON /* ... */

Or you can use for example

MERGE 
   Users
USING master..spt_values
UNPIVOT (X FOR Y IN ([high],[low])) AS foo 
ON  
   Users.Username = foo.Y 
WHEN MATCHED THEN
    UPDATE SET FirstName = foo.Y
WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN
    INSERT (UserGUID, Username, FirstName, LastName, AuthenticationMethod)
    VALUES (foo.Y, foo.Y, foo.Y, foo.Y, foo.Y);

For your bonus question you can use the VALUES clause here as part of the derived_table option.

MERGE Users
USING (VALUES ('{77410DC5-7A3E-4F1A-82C6-8EFB3068DE66}',
      'iboyd',
      'Ian',
      'Boyd',
      'Windows')) AS foo(UserGUID, Username, FirstName, LastName, AuthenticationMethod)
ON Users.UserName = foo.UserName
WHEN MATCHED THEN
  UPDATE SET Firstname = foo.FirstName,
             Lastname = foo.LastName
WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN
  INSERT (UserGUID,
          Username,
          FirstName,
          LastName,
          AuthenticationMethod)
  VALUES (UserGUID,
          Username,
          FirstName,
          LastName,
          AuthenticationMethod);