Periodically I find myself wanting to insert into some table, specifying the primary key column(s), but to simply ignore the request if it's already there. Currently I have two options:
1) Do the insert as normal, but suppress errors. SAVEPOINT foo; INSERT INTO table (col1,col2,col3) VALUES (val1,val2,val3); (if error) ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT foo;
2) Use INSERT... SELECT: INSERT INTO table (col1,col2,col3) SELECT val1,val2,val3 WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM table WHERE col1=val1 AND col2=val2)
The former makes unnecessary log entries, the latter feels clunky. Is there some better way?