Word of the day: Upsert

'JW' on Sun, 01 Jun 2008 11:16:51 GMT, sez:

There is a SQL dialect with a word MODIFY that does exactly that...

'Ryan Patterson' on Sun, 01 Jun 2008 12:33:09 GMT, sez:

We in the MySQL world call that 'REPLACE', which really is a real word :P

'goran' on Sun, 01 Jun 2008 12:42:43 GMT, sez:

I kinda like it. Replace and Modify do not have the same connotation to me. Also having upsert (wow squiggly lines again!) procedures helps clearing up your persistence API a lot. No more checking for existing records and switching behavior.
API users do not normally care abut what they need to do to persist data, they just wanna upsert.
If it bothers you that much you can add Delete in the combination and call it Merge :)

'Peter' on Sun, 01 Jun 2008 13:56:26 GMT, sez:

I like the word "updation".

updation is to UPDATE as selection is to SELECT and deletion is to DELETE. You see? It all makes sense.

'Domenic' on Sun, 01 Jun 2008 14:14:50 GMT, sez:

That's a good word that I too have never seen before. I agree it has well-defined connotations that make it nice.

Does it appear in public APIs?

(Although I saw the title of this post in my RSS reader I was like "hmm, it's going to be a post about how he's upset about some kind of data-insertion bug.")

'Nate' on Sun, 01 Jun 2008 18:32:34 GMT, sez:

It's called MERGE in Oracle.

'Snagy' on Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:21:57 GMT, sez:

Sounds like "Upstart" which describes you perfectly Leon...

'Jeff' on Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:39:00 GMT, sez:

also sounds like "Usurp"

'Bob Armour' on Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:50:36 GMT, sez:

Leon,

That's a really useful word - all we need now is a similar word to describe the pseudo code that appears in singletons (and a few other places)...

Lookup an item that you expect to exist
If it exists, return it
If it doesn't, create it and return that instead.

'Goran' on Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:15:50 GMT, sez:

@Bob

That would be inselect?

Goran

'Kyralessa' on Mon, 02 Jun 2008 23:33:05 GMT, sez:

I like "updation". I'm going to start using that one.

'WaterBreath' on Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:35:41 GMT, sez:

@Bob Armour:

I think "conjure" is perfect for that purpose. =)

It has somewhat fantastical connotations, but it works because the word means either to call upon something that already exists, or to bring something into existence.

The only drawback is that it sort of implies mysterious dark magic happening behind the curtain. Although that may appeal to some people too. =)

'lb' on Wed, 04 Jun 2008 08:00:09 GMT, sez:

@waterbreath

I like Conjure!

'Remi Sabourin' on Thu, 05 Jun 2008 02:13:43 GMT, sez:

Awesome post, naming things intuitively can be quite important for code maintainance! I'm glad to see other people use Save, it's been my standard name too.

Abstraction is not better, I think you have deomonstrated abstraction improves things further. You now have both re-use and abstraction. So why pick between the two – have both! For example, the bridge pattern and abstraction might be used to make up for two components or classes that were implemented seperatedly with a lack of attention to re-use. It merely abtracts away the overlapping code, yet the code behind the abstraction is just as difficult to maintain as previously.

I agree with you though for Save, I loved reading this, too funny

'altaiojok' on Mon, 28 Jul 2008 02:51:26 GMT, sez:

This actually is a real API verb in the Force.com API:

http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/api/Content/sforce_api_calls_upsert.htm

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