Ideal way to update a field in a table

Question

Hi All,
We need to update a field in a table which have some 8 million records.
The value of the field needs to be updated in all the above mentioned records.
Now, we have an input file with all the primary key fields and the field to be updated.
Can any one suggest the ideal way to update the field.
1.     Updating the database for each record.
Loop at itab.
Update…….
Endloop.
2.     Updating the database with a set of 100 records.
We are planning to schedule the job in the background.
Thanks for your help.
Regards,
Krishna

Answer 1

Hi,
be very carefull with the update, ´cause you can damage 8 million records !!
You better use instruction Update for this:
update mytable set field = value where conditions.
Try to use all key fields in the conditions and never use something like
update mytable set: field1 = value1
                    field2 = value2
                    field3 = value3 where conditions.
The loop in your case 1 is not absolutely necessary, ´cause you update a whole bunch of records at once with the conditions in Update.
Test the changes in the development system before you do it in production