Oracle merge constants into single table

Question

In Oracle, given a simple data table:

create table data (
    id       VARCHAR2(255),
    key      VARCHAR2(255),
    value    VARCHAR2(511));

Answer 1

I prefer to try the update before the insert to save having to check for an exception.

update data set ...=... where ...=...;

if sql%notfound then

    insert into data (...) values (...);

end if;

Even now we have the merge statement, I still tend to do single-row updates this way - just seems more a more natural syntax. Of course, merge really comes into its own when dealing with larger data sets.