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Software Engineering vocabulary · Databases and Persistence

UPDATE statement

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

nounCore term

In software engineering, UPDATE statement means: The SQL statement that changes values in rows that already exist, usually limited by a WHERE clause so that only the right rows are changed.

In Turkish: UPDATE komutu, güncelleme komutu

How it is used

Written as UPDATE table SET column = value WHERE condition. Careful teams run the WHERE part as a SELECT first, wrap risky updates in a transaction and check the 'rows affected' count before committing. A mass update on a big table can lock it and fill the log.

Example sentences

  1. I'll run the UPDATE statement inside a transaction and check the row count before I commit.

  2. This UPDATE statement should change only the orders from last week.

Common collocations

  • run an UPDATE statement
  • UPDATE ... SET
  • mass update
  • update a record
  • rows affected
  • WHERE clauseThe part of a SQL statement that sets a condition, so only the rows that meet it are read, updated or deleted.
  • INSERT statementThe SQL statement that adds one or more new rows to a table, using INSERT INTO followed by the column names and their values.
  • DELETE statementThe SQL statement that removes rows from a table. With a WHERE clause it removes only matching rows; without one it removes every row.
  • transactionA group of database operations that are treated as one unit: either all of them succeed together or none of them is applied.
  • DMLData manipulation language: the SQL statements that work with the data inside tables, mainly INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE and often SELECT.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Databases and Persistence

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