Swapping ms-sql tables

Question

I want to swap to tables in the best possible manner.
I have an IpToCountry table, and I create a new one on a weekly basis according to an external CSV file which I import.

Answer 1

What happens to IpToCountryOld? Do you throw it away? In which case, why not truncate IpToCountry and import my new data.

If you need to keep the data, how about storing the load date on the table and storing the "current" load date somewhere to be used in a WHERE clause? Then you switch the current date when the data is successfully loaded.

You don't say which DB you're using, so I don't know how much use this is, but do you have any stored procedures that reference the table? Be warned that on some platforms SPs are compiled using internal references to tables that will not change with a rename, so there's a risk that SPs won't pick up your new data without a recompile. The same can be true for views and stored parsed queries.