Strategy for storing supplemental data alongside imported data

Question

I have ran into this problem a few times and I am wondering what other people are doing.

When I am creating a database, sometimes I have to import data into a table

Answer 1

Here is a SQL Server 2008 merge statement that I came up with to help me with my current situation:

MERGE INTO dbo.Sections as S        -- Target
USING dbo.SectionsStaging as SS     -- Source
ON S.Id = SS.Id                     -- Join
WHEN MATCHED THEN                   -- Record exists in both tables
    UPDATE SET
        TermCode = SS.TermCode,
        CourseTitle = SS.CourseTitle,
        CoursePrefix = SS.CoursePrefix,
        CourseNumber = SS.CourseNumber,
        SectionNumber = SS.SectionNumber,
        Capacity = SS.Capacity,
        Campus = SS.Campus,
        FacultyFirstName = SS.FacultyFirstName,
        FacultyLastName = SS.FacultyLastName,
        [Status] = SS.[Status],
        Enrollment = SS.Enrollment
WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN               -- Record exists only in source table
    INSERT ([Id],[TermCode],[CourseTitle],[CoursePrefix],[CourseNumber],[SectionNumber],[Capacity],[Campus],[FacultyFirstName],[FacultyLastName],[Status],[Enrollment])
    VALUES (SS.[Id],SS.[TermCode],SS.[CourseTitle],SS.[CoursePrefix],SS.[CourseNumber],SS.[SectionNumber],SS.[Capacity],SS.[Campus],SS.[FacultyFirstName],SS.[FacultyLastName],SS.[Status],SS.[Enrollment])
WHEN NOT MATCHED BY SOURCE THEN     -- Record exists only in target table
    DELETE;

Good stuff!

Answer 2

Well, when you do the import, import into a temp table, and then update the records in the production table (update in the generic sense of the word: delete what's deleted, add what's new, modify what's changed).

You might also want to check out the new MERGE SQL command in 2008, it just might turn out to be very helpful for this case.