Re: INSERT ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE

Robert Treat <xzilla@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>
[snip]
>
> IIRC the main downside to the select/update method is it introduces a
> race condition that can only be solved by locking the table; not an
> issue for most my$ql apps but would be frowned upon by most postgresql
> users.
[snip]

One way around the race condition is to insert and, if the insert
fails, do an update.  If that fails, then something is actually wrong.

One caveat regarding the above solution: Even when an insert fails, if
there's a column with a sequence in it, that sequence will be
incremented nonetheless.

Jim