Efficient way to update all rows in a table

Question

I have a table with a lot of records (could be more than 500 000 or 1 000 000). I added a new column in this table and I need to fill a value for every row in the column, us

Answer 1

You could drop any indexes on the table, then do your insert, and then recreate the indexes.

Answer 2

Might not work you for, but a technique I've used a couple times in the past for similar circumstances.

created updated_{table_name}, then select insert into this table in batches. Once finished, and this hinges on Oracle ( which I don't know or use ) supporting the ability to rename tables in an atomic fashion. updated_{table_name} becomes {table_name} while {table_name} becomes original_{table_name}.

Last time I had to do this was for a heavily indexed table with several million rows that absolutely positively could not be locked for the duration needed to make some serious changes to it.

Answer 3

As Marcelo suggests:

UPDATE mytable
SET new_column = <expr containing old_column>;

If this takes too long and fails due to "snapshot too old" errors (e.g. if the expression queries another highly-active table), and if the new value for the column is always NOT NULL, you could update the table in batches:

UPDATE mytable
SET new_column = <expr containing old_column>
WHERE new_column IS NULL
AND ROWNUM <= 100000;

Just run this statement, COMMIT, then run it again; rinse, repeat until it reports "0 rows updated". It'll take longer but each update is less likely to fail.

EDIT:

A better alternative that should be more efficient is to use the DBMS_PARALLEL_EXECUTE API.

Sample code (from Oracle docs):

DECLARE
  l_sql_stmt VARCHAR2(1000);
  l_try NUMBER;
  l_status NUMBER;
BEGIN

  -- Create the TASK
  DBMS_PARALLEL_EXECUTE.CREATE_TASK ('mytask');

  -- Chunk the table by ROWID
  DBMS_PARALLEL_EXECUTE.CREATE_CHUNKS_BY_ROWID('mytask', 'HR', 'EMPLOYEES', true, 100);

  -- Execute the DML in parallel
  l_sql_stmt := 'update EMPLOYEES e 
      SET e.salary = e.salary + 10
      WHERE rowid BETWEEN :start_id AND :end_id';
  DBMS_PARALLEL_EXECUTE.RUN_TASK('mytask', l_sql_stmt, DBMS_SQL.NATIVE,
                                 parallel_level => 10);

  -- If there is an error, RESUME it for at most 2 times.
  l_try := 0;
  l_status := DBMS_PARALLEL_EXECUTE.TASK_STATUS('mytask');
  WHILE(l_try < 2 and l_status != DBMS_PARALLEL_EXECUTE.FINISHED) 
  LOOP
    l_try := l_try + 1;
    DBMS_PARALLEL_EXECUTE.RESUME_TASK('mytask');
    l_status := DBMS_PARALLEL_EXECUTE.TASK_STATUS('mytask');
  END LOOP;

  -- Done with processing; drop the task
  DBMS_PARALLEL_EXECUTE.DROP_TASK('mytask');

END;
/

Oracle Docs: https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/ARPLS/d_parallel_ex.htm#ARPLS67333

Answer 4

What is the database version? Check out virtual columns in 11g:

Adding Columns with a Default Value http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/oracle-database-11g-top-features/11g-schemamanagement.html

Answer 5

The usual way is to use UPDATE:

UPDATE mytable
   SET new_column = <expr containing old_column>

You should be able to do this is a single transaction.

Answer 6

update Hotels set Discount=30 where Hotelid >= 1 and Hotelid <= 5504