Update count column from data in another table

Question

In my DB I have two tables Items(Id, ..., ToatlViews int) and ItemViews (id, ItemId, Timestamp)

In ItemViews table I store all views of an item as they come to the s

Answer 1

You could use update ... from instead of a cursor:

update  i
set     TotalViews = iv.cnt
from    dbo.Item i
join    (
        select  ItemId
        ,       count(*) as cnt
        from    dbo.ItemViews
        group by
                ItemId
        ) iv
on      i.Id = iv.ItemId

Answer 2

;WITH x AS 
(
  SELECT ItemID, c = COUNT(*) 
  FROM dbo.ItemViews
  GROUP BY ItemID
)
UPDATE i
SET TotalViews = x.c
FROM dbo.Items AS i
INNER JOIN x
ON x.ItemID = i.ItemID;

But why do you want to store this value, when you can always get the count at runtime? You're going to have to run this update statement every time you touch the ItemViews table in any way, otherwise the count stored with Items is going to be incorrect.

What you may consider doing instead is setting up an indexed view:

CREATE VIEW dbo.ItemViewCount
WITH SCHEMABINDING
AS
    SELECT ItemID, ItemCount = COUNT_BIG(*)
      FROM dbo.ItemViews
      GROUP BY ItemID;
GO
CREATE UNIQUE CLUSTERED INDEX x ON dbo.ItemViewCount(ItemID);

Now you can join to the view in your queries and know that the count is always up to date (without paying the penalty of scanning for the count of each item). The downside to the indexed view is that you pay that cost incrementally when there are inserts/updates/deletes to the ItemViews table.

Answer 3

You can use a direct UPDATE statement

update Items set TotalViews = 
     (select COUNT(id) from ItemViews where ItemViews.ItemId = Items.Id)

You might want to test performance for the various ways to do this, if that's important.

Answer 4

I found this question / answer a year after it was written and answered. the answer was okay, but I was after something a bit more automatic. I ended up writing a trigger to automatically recalculate the column when a relevant row in the other table was inserted, deleted or updated.

I think it's a better solution than running something manually to do the recalculation as there isn't any possibility of someone forgetting to run the code:

CREATE TRIGGER [dbo].[TriggerItemTotalViews] 
   ON  [dbo].[ItemViews]
   AFTER INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE
AS 
BEGIN
SET NOCOUNT ON;

UPDATE [Items] 
SET [TotalViews] = 
    (
    SELECT COUNT(id) 
    FROM [ItemViews] 
    WHERE [ItemViews].[ItemId] = [Items].[ItemId]
    )
WHERE [Items].[ItemId] IN
    (
    SELECT [ItemId] FROM [INSERTED] 
    UNION 
    SELECT [ItemId] FROM [DELETED]
    )
END

Answer 5

Same but different:

declare @productId int = 24;
declare @classificationTypeId int = 86;

update s
set CounterByProductAndClassificationType = row_num
from Samples s
join
(
    select row_number() over (order by (select Id)) row_num, Id
    from Samples
    where 
        ProductId = @productId and
        ClassificationTypeId = @classificationTypeId
) s_row on s.Id = s_row.Id