Triggers Introduction

A trigger is a database object that is bound to a table. In many aspects, it is similar

to a stored procedure. As a matter of fact, triggers are often referred to as a "special
kind of stored procedure".
When to Use Triggers
There are many reasons to use triggers. If you have a table which keeps a log of
messages, you may want to have a copy of them mailed to you if they are urgent. If
there were no triggers, you would have some solutions, though they are not as
elegant. You could modify the application(s) logging the messages. This means that
you might be redundantly coding the same thing in every application that logs
messages.
Tables can have multiple triggers. The CREATE TRIGGER statement can be defined
with the FOR UPDATE, FOR INSERT, or FOR DELETE clauses to target a trigger to
a specific class of data modification actions. When FOR UPDATE is specified, the IF
UPDATE (column_name) clause can be used to target a trigger to updates affecting a
particular column.
SQL Server 2000 greatly enhances trigger functionality, extending the capabilities of
the triggers you already know and love, and adding a whole new type of trigger, the
"Instead Of" trigger.
SQL Server 2000 has many types of triggers:
1. After Trigger
2. Multiple After Triggers
3. Instead Of Triggers
4. Mixing Triggers Type
After Triggers
Triggers that run after an update, insert, or delete can be used in several ways:
 Triggers can update, insert, or delete data in the same or other tables. This is
useful to maintain relationships between data or to keep audit trail
information.
 Triggers can check data against values of data in the rest of the table or in
other tables. This is useful when you cannot use RI constraints or check
constraints because of references to data from other rows from this or other
tables.
 Triggers can use user-defined functions to activate non-database operations.
This is useful, for example, for issuing alerts or updating information outside
the database.
Note: An AFTER trigger can be created only on tables, not on views.
How to Create After Triggers
1. Working with INSERT Triggers
2. INSERT INTO Customers
3. VALUES (‘Mayank’,’Gupta’,’Hauz Khas’,’Delhi’,
4. ’Delhi’,’110016’,’01126853138’)
5. INSERT INTO Customers
6. VALUES(‘Himanshu’,’Khatri’,’ShahjahanMahal ’,
7. ’Jaipur’,’Rajesthan’,’326541’,’9412658745’)
8. INSERT INTO Customers
9. VALUES (‘Sarfaraz’,’Khan’,’Green Market’,
10. ’Hydrabad’,’AP’,’698542’,’9865478521’)
11.
12. INSERT INTO Products
13. VALUES (‘ASP.Net Microsoft Press’,550)
14. INSERT INTO Products
15. VALUES (‘ASP.Net Wrox Publication’,435)
16. INSERT INTO Products
17. VALUES (‘ASP.Net Unleased’,320)
18. INSERT INTO Products
19. VALUES (‘ASP.Net aPress’,450)
20.
21. CREATE TRIGGER invUpdate ON [Orders]
22. FOR INSERT
23. AS
24. UPDATE p SET p.instock=[p.instock – i.qty]
FROM products p JOIN inserted I ON p.prodid = i.prodid
You created INSERT trigger that referenced the logical inserted table.
Whenever you insert a new record in the Orders table now, the corresponding
record in the Products table will be updated to subtract the quantity of the
order from the quantity on hand in the instack column of the Products table.
25. Working with DELETE Triggers
DELETE triggers are used for restricting the data that your users can remove
from a database. For example:
CREATE TRIGGER DelhiDel ON [Customers]
FOR DELETE
AS
IF (SELECT state FROM deleted) = ‘Delhi’
BEGIN
PRINT ‘Can not remove customers from Delhi’
PRINT ‘Transaction has been canceled’
ROOLBACK
END
DELETE trigger uses the logical deleted table to make certain that you were
not trying to delete a customer from the great state “Delhi” – if you did try to
delete such a customer, you would be met with Mayank in the from of an error
message (which was generated by the PRINT statement that you entered in the
trigger code).
26. Working with UPDATE Triggers
UPDATE triggers are used to restrict UPDATE statements issued by your
users, or back your previous data.
CREATE TRIGGER CheckStock ON [Products]
FOR UPDATE
AS
IF (SELECT InStock FROM inserted) < 0
BEGIN
PRINT ‘Cannot oversell Products’
 PRINT ‘Transaction has been cancelled’
ROLLBACK
END
You created an UPDATE trigger that references the inserted table to verify that
you are not trying to insert a value that is less than zero. You need to check
only the inserted table because SQL Server performs any necessary
mathematical functions before inserting your data.
Multiple After Triggers

More than one trigger can now be defined on a table for each Insert/Update/Delete.
Although in general, you might not want to do this (it's easy to get confused if you
over-use triggers), there are situations where this is ideal. One example that springs
to mind is that you can split your triggers up into two categories:
 Application based triggers (cascading deletes or validation, for example).
 Auditing triggers (for recording details of changes to critical data).
This would allow you to alter triggers of one type without fear of accidentally
breaking the other.
If you are using multiple triggers, it is of course essential to know which order they
fire in. A new stored procedure called sp_settriggerorder allows you to set a trigger
to be either the "first" or "last" to fire.
If you want more than two triggers to fire in a specific order, there is no way to
specifically define this. A deeply unscientific test I did indicated that multiple
triggers for the same table and operation will run in the order they were created
unless you specifically tell them otherwise. I would not recommend relying on this
though.
Instead Of Triggers

Instead Of Triggers fire instead of the operation that fires the trigger, so if you define
an Instead Of trigger on a table for the Delete operation, they try to delete rows,
they will not actually get deleted (unless you issue another delete instruction from
within the trigger) as in this simple example:
CREATE TABLE Mayank (Name varchar(32))
GO

CREATE TRIGGER tr_mayank ON Mayank

INSTEAD OF DELETE
AS
PRINT 'Sorry - you cannot delete this data'
GO

INSERT Mayank
SELECT 'Cannot' union
SELECT 'Delete' union
SELECT 'Me'
GO

DELETE Mayank
GO

SELECT * FROM Mayank

GO
DROP TABLE Mayank
If you were to print out the contents of the inserted and deleted tables from inside an
Instead Of trigger, you would see they behave in exactly the same way as normal. In
this case, the deleted table holds the rows you were trying to delete, even though
they will not get deleted.
Instead of Triggers can be used in some very powerful ways!
 You can define an Instead Of trigger on a view (something that will not work
with After triggers) and this is the basis of the Distributed Partitioned Views
that are used so split data across a cluster of SQL Servers.
 You can use Instead Of triggers to simplify the process of updating multiple
tables for application developers.
 Mixing Trigger Types.
If you were to define an Instead Of trigger and an After trigger on the same table for
the same operation, what would happen?
Because an After trigger fires after an operation completes, and an 'instead of'
trigger prevents the operation from taking place, the After trigger would never fire
in this situation.
However, if an Instead Of trigger on a (say) delete operation contains a subsequent
delete on the same table, then any After trigger defined for the delete operation on
that table will fire on the basis of the delete statement issued from the Instead Of
trigger. The original delete statement is not executed, only the Delete in the Instead
Of trigger runs.
This code sample creates a trigger of each type, and changed the nature of the
delete statement issued so that only comics that have a value of 0 in the Preserve
column can be deleted.
CREATE TABLE Gupta (Comic VARCHAR (32), Preserve INT)
GO

INSERT Gupta
SELECT 'groucho', 1 UNION
SELECT 'chico', 1 UNION
SELECT 'harpo', 0 UNION
SELECT 'zeppo', 0
GO

CREATE TRIGGER trGuptaDelete ON Gupta

FOR DELETE
AS
SELECT Comic AS "deleting_these_names_only"
FROM deleted
GO

CREATE TRIGGER tr_Gupta_InsteadOf ON Gupta

INSTEAD OF DELETE
AS
DELETE Gupta
FROM Gupta
INNER JOIN Deleted
ON Gupta.Comic = Deleted.Comic
WHERE Gupta.Preserve= 0
GO

DELETE Gupta WHERE Comic IN ('GROUCHO', 'HARPO')

GO

SELECT * FROM Gupta

DROP TABLE Gupta

Important
Triggers can be used in the following scenarios, such as: if the database is de-
normalized and requires an automated way to update redundant data contained in
multiple tables, or if customized messages and complex error handling are required,
or if a value in one table must be validated against a non-identical value in another
table.
Triggers are a powerful tool that can be used to enforce the business rules
automatically when the data is modified. Triggers can also be used to maintain the
data integrity. But they are not to maintain data integrity. Triggers should be used to
maintain the data integrity only if you are unable to enforce the data integrity using
CONSTRAINTS, RULES, and DEFAULTS. Triggers cannot be created on the
temporary tables.