How to set a default value for one column in SQL based on another column

Question

I\'m working with an old SQL 2000 database and I don\'t have a whole lot of SQL experience under my belt. When a new row is added to one of my tables I need to assign a defa

Answer 1

I can think of two ways:

1. triggers
2. default value or binding (this should work with a dependency)

Triggers seem well explained here, so I won't elaborate. But generally I try and stay away from triggers for this sort of stuff, as they are more appropriate for other tasks

"default value or binding" can be achieved by creating a function e.g.

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[ComponentContractor_SortOrder] ()
RETURNS float
AS
BEGIN
RETURN (SELECT MAX(SortOrder) + 5 FROM [dbo].[tblTender_ComponentContractor])
END

And then setting the "default value or binding" for that column to ([dbo].ComponentContractor_SortOrder)

Answer 2

Be sure to write the trigger so it will handle multi-row inserts. Do not process one row at a time in a trigger or assume only one row will be in the inserted table.