UPSERT Within the Same Table

Question

Hi All,
I have the following two tables: ALLOWANCE and RANGES. ALLOWANCE has the key column AllowanceID and corresponding to each AllowanceID, there will be a number of RANGE entries. Range has a primary key called RangeID and a reference to AllowanceID. Besides these, it has the following columns.
RANGESTART
RANGEEND
POUNDS
SUM
Now, I want to write a query to match the ranges of two AllowanceIDs. ie, Given SorceAllowanceID and TargetAllowanceID, I want to match the number of ranges as well as the range values of the souce to target. So I have the following query (I am using only one column here) followed by an INSERT statement(not shown here),
UPDATE
SELECT
src.pounds AS src_pounds ,
tgt.pounds AS tgt_pounds
FROM
SELECT rank() OVER (PARTITION BY PR.ALLOWANCEID ORDER BY PR.RANGESTART) RN
,PR.*
FROM RANGES PR
WHERE PR.ALLOWANCEID=sourceallowanceid
ORDER BY PR.RANGESTART) src ,
SELECT rank() OVER (PARTITION BY PR.ALLOWANCEID ORDER BY PR.RANGESTART) PN ,PR.*
FROM ranges PR
WHERE PR.aLLOWANCEID=targetallowanceid
ORDER BY PR.RANGESTART) TGT
WHERE src.Rn=tgt.PN
SET tgt_pounds = src_pounds;
But this has thrown ORA-01779. Then I tried with the MERGE statement
MERGE INTO
SELECT rank() OVER (PARTITION BY PR.ALLOWANCEID ORDER BY PR.RANGESTART) PN
,PR.*
FROM RANGES PR
WHERE PR.ALLOWANCEID=targetallowanceid
ORDER BY PR.RANGESTART) tgt
USING (SELECT rank() OVER (PARTITION BY PR.ALLOWANCEID ORDER BY PR.RANGESTART) RN
,PR.*
FROM RANGES PR
WHERE PR.ALLOWANCEID=sourceallowanceid
ORDER BY PR.RANGESTART) src
ON ( src.RN = tgt.PN )
WHEN MATCHED THEN
UPDATE SET tgt.pounds = src.pounds
WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN
--Insert
which has thrown ORA-00903.
Please guide me how to write a query for this.
Thanking you all,
Pradeep

Answer 1

This it the forum for the SQL Developer tool. Your question will get better response int the SQL and PL/SQL forum.
Having said that, you need to be updating a table, not an inline view.
i.e.
update x
set ...
not
update (select * from x)
set ...