Cascade copy a row with all child rows and their child rows, etc

Question

I\'m attempting to track items in commercial building construction (specifically concrete cladding).

• A project can have multiple blocks (a block being a single

Answer 1

I assume that Blocks.BlockID, Elevations.ElevationID, Floors.FloorID, Panels.PanelID are primary keys and autogenerated IDENTITY.

• One Block has many Elevations.
• One Elevation has many Floors.
• One Floor has many Panels.

I'd use MERGE with OUTPUT clause.

MERGE can INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE rows. In this case we need only INSERT.

1=0 is always false, so the NOT MATCHED BY TARGET part is always executed. In general, there could be other branches, see docs. WHEN MATCHED is usually used to UPDATE; WHEN NOT MATCHED BY SOURCE is usually used to DELETE, but we don't need them here.

This convoluted form of MERGE is equivalent to simple INSERT, but unlike simple INSERT its OUTPUT clause allows to refer to the columns that we need. It allows to retrieve columns from both source and destination tables thus saving a mapping between old existing IDs and new IDs generated by IDENTITY.

Block

Copy one given Block and remember the ID of the new Block. We can use simple INSERT and SCOPE_IDENTITY here, because BlockID is primary key and only one row can be inserted.

DECLARE @blockToCopy int = 1;
DECLARE @VarNewBlockID int;
INSERT INTO Blocks
    (ProjectID
    ,BlockName
    ,BlockDescription)
SELECT
    ProjectID
    ,'NewNameTest'
    ,'NewDescTest'
FROM Blocks
WHERE Blocks.BlockID = @blockToCopy
;
SET @VarNewBlockID = SCOPE_IDENTITY();

Elevations

Copy Elevations from old Block and assign them to the new Block. Remember the mapping between old IDs and freshly generated IDs in @MapElevations.

DECLARE @MapElevations TABLE(OldElevationID int, NewElevationID int);

MERGE INTO Elevations
USING
(
    SELECT
        ElevationID
        ,@VarNewBlockID AS BlockID
        ,ElevationName
        ,ElevationDescription
    FROM Elevations
    WHERE Elevations.BlockID = @blockToCopy
) AS Src
ON 1 = 0
WHEN NOT MATCHED BY TARGET THEN
INSERT
    (BlockID
    ,ElevationName
    ,ElevationDescription)
VALUES
    (Src.BlockID
    ,Src.ElevationName
    ,Src.ElevationDescription)
OUTPUT
    Src.ElevationID AS OldElevationID
    ,inserted.ElevationID AS NewElevationID
INTO @MapElevations(OldElevationID, NewElevationID)
;

Floors

Copy Floors using mapping between old and new ElevationID. Remember the mapping between old IDs and freshly generated IDs in @MapFloors.

DECLARE @MapFloors TABLE(OldFloorID int, NewFloorID int);

MERGE INTO Floors
USING
(
    SELECT
        Floors.FloorID
        ,M.NewElevationID AS ElevationID
        ,Floors.FloorName
        ,Floors.FloorDescription
    FROM
        Floors
        INNER JOIN Elevations ON Elevations.ElevationID = Floors.ElevationID
        INNER JOIN @MapElevations AS M ON M.OldElevationID = Elevations.ElevationID
    WHERE Elevations.BlockID = @blockToCopy
) AS Src
ON 1 = 0
WHEN NOT MATCHED BY TARGET THEN
INSERT
    (ElevationID
    ,FloorName
    ,FloorDescription)
VALUES
    (Src.ElevationID
    ,Src.FloorName
    ,Src.FloorDescription)
OUTPUT
    Src.FloorID AS OldFloorID
    ,inserted.FloorID AS NewFloorID
INTO @MapFloors(OldFloorID, NewFloorID)
;

Panels

Copy Panels using mapping between old and new FloorID. This is the last level of details, so we can use simple INSERT and don't remember the mapping of IDs.

INSERT INTO Panels
    (FloorID
    ,PanelName
    ,PanelDescription)
SELECT
    M.NewFloorID
    ,Panels.PanelName
    ,Panels.PanelDescription
FROM
    Panels
    INNER JOIN Floors ON Floors.FloorID = Panels.FloorID
    INNER JOIN Elevations ON Elevations.ElevationID = Floors.ElevationID
    INNER JOIN @MapFloors AS M ON M.OldFloorID = Floors.FloorID
WHERE Elevations.BlockID = @blockToCopy
;