How to Achieve Atomic Row Insertion in SQL: Exploring Alternatives to `INSERT SELECT NOT EXISTS`?

SQL Atomic Row Insertion: Exploring Alternatives

This article explores various ways to implement atomic row insertion in SQL and points out the potential limitations of the INSERT SELECT NOT EXISTS approach. Although a single SQL statement is generally considered atomic, meaning that it either succeeds completely or fails completely, NOT EXISTS race condition vulnerabilities can arise in this scenario.

NOT EXISTS Race conditions in mode

The NOT EXISTS subquery in the provided SQL statement checks whether a row with the specified primary key exists in the table. However, if multiple concurrent threads try to insert rows with the same primary key, the NOT EXISTS check may briefly return false for all threads, allowing all threads to continue inserting. This can cause duplicate rows to be created, thus violating primary key constraints.

Alternative methods

To resolve this issue, here are a few alternatives to consider:

1. IF NOT EXISTSMode:

This mode uses the IF statement to check if an existing row exists before inserting:

<code class="language-sql">IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM TheTable WHERE PrimaryKey = @primaryKey)
    INSERT INTO TheTable
    VALUES (@primaryKey, @value1, @value2)</code>

This method ensures that only one row with a given primary key is inserted into the table. However, under high concurrency, it may be less efficient than the NOT EXISTS pattern because it requires executing additional SELECT statements for each insert operation.

2. JFDI mode:

The "Just Do It" (JFDI) pattern is designed to handle race conditions by attempting an insert and catching the resulting primary key conflict error:

<code class="language-sql">BEGIN TRY
    INSERT INTO TheTable
    VALUES (@primaryKey, @value1, @value2)
END TRY
BEGIN CATCH
    IF ERROR_NUMBER() = 2627  -- Unique key violation
        RAISEERROR(...)  -- 处理错误，例如记录日志或返回错误信息
END CATCH</code>

This method has high concurrency and requires no additional SELECT statements or locks. However, it may not be as clear and concise as other modes. RAISEERROR Part of it needs to add specific error handling logic based on the actual situation.

3. Table-level locking:

This involves using table-level locks to prevent concurrent inserts with the same primary key:

<code class="language-sql">INSERT INTO TheTable WITH (HOLDLOCK)
VALUES (@primaryKey, @value1, @value2)</code>

Table-level locks can guarantee exclusive access to the entire table and prevent other threads from inserting duplicate rows. However, they can also severely impact performance, especially under high concurrency.

Conclusion

Which atomic row insertion method is chosen depends on the specific needs of the application. If high concurrency and atomicity are critical, JFDI mode or table-level locking may be suitable options. For scenarios where efficiency is a priority, the IF NOT EXISTS mode combined with appropriate index optimization may be an effective choice.

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