Mass updates to a table

[Pat Traynor]

I've got a web-based form that will allow people to update a database
that is displayed as a table. Let's say that there are several columns
across titled Red, Blue, Green... and several rows titled 01, 02, 03...
In each cell, they can fill in some simple text data.

The only way that I can think of to update the database with this
information is using two imbedded loops in Perl:

pseudocode:
for($color=1;$c olor<=10;++$col or) {
for($number=1;$ number<=10;++$n umber) {
update table xyz set value=$value[$color][$number]
where color=$color and number=$number;

This would mean that it would have to execute 100 update statements.
Perhaps this is no big deal and I shouldn't worry about it, but since
I'm relatively new to sql, I'm guessing that there's probably a more
streamlined method to do this.

BTW - I've seen a lot of people asking questions that were vaguely
similar to mine in this group, and they've been told to go to the php
group, even though I didn't see any php-specific code in their
questions. I don't use php and don't have it installed on my server.

[Aggro]

Pat Traynor wrote:

The only way that I can think of to update the database with this
information is using two imbedded loops in Perl:

pseudocode:
for($color=1;$c olor<=10;++$col or) {
for($number=1;$ number<=10;++$n umber) {
update table xyz set value=$value[$color][$number]
where color=$color and number=$number;

If $value[$color][$number] has different values (as it seems to have in
this case), then this is propably the only way to do this.

Of course you could add some checking whether the data has changed or
not, and run update only for those rows where data has changed.

If you need to set same value to each row, it would be of course easy
just to run query: update xyz set value=same_valu e;

[Aggro]

Pat Traynor wrote:

The only way that I can think of to update the database with this
information is using two imbedded loops in Perl:

pseudocode:
for($color=1;$c olor<=10;++$col or) {
for($number=1;$ number<=10;++$n umber) {
update table xyz set value=$value[$color][$number]
where color=$color and number=$number;

If $value[$color][$number] has different values (as it seems to have in
this case), then this is propably the only way to do this.

Of course you could add some checking whether the data has changed or
not, and run update only for those rows where data has changed.

If you need to set same value to each row, it would be of course easy
just to run query: update xyz set value=same_valu e;