Jun
28
Dear Shane,
Next time trust me. SELECT INTO is always faster than UPDATE when you’re talking about updating the entire table. Even if the table has three NVARCHAR(MAX) fields and you’re only updating one 4 byte INT column.
Rather than run an update for 1hr 6min before you decide to cancel said query and trigger a 2hr 51min rollback of the transaction. Rather than writing a cursor to perform an in-place update of said heap using the only index you have on it. Just SELECT INTO a new table. This will update 168M rows in 48 minutes.
Listen to me next time. And save yourself some time.
Sincerely,
Your Instincts
Tags: SQL Server, SQL Tricks