anyone know of a good article on an efficient way to update multiple records at a time in a db?

Can't recall seeing it done in Access, although I believe I saw something about using a data adapter with a repeater against Access in .net.

Most SQL DB's have a "ROWSET" concept that you can use either within a transaction or as simple lock and load. The big issue is figuring out how you want to handle it if one of the record updates fails but the rest go through.

I might have some UPDATE QUERY ms sql code that I used as a stored proc to do bulk changes on groups of records. Not quite the same thing, but I'll try to dig it out this weekend. I've also got something that passes an XML stream into an SQL parameter used by update query, uses openxml to turn it into a set, then processes the set; if that would be more useful to you.

BTW... The rowset stuff is pretty straight forward but uses cursors so you'll see a perfomance penalty. DBA's will declare that your mother was a hampster and your father smelt of elderberries!

thanks for the input,

right now the db i need to do this with is in access. there has to be a way to do it. maybe i can take all of the values with their individual id numbers and loop an update using one id at a time?!?

What types of updates do you need to do?

To update the same fields in multiple records at once just add a WHERE clause to your update statement.

If you want to make *different* types of changes to multiple records then there's no way around applying a different UPDATE statement to each record.. how else would the database know what changes to make to each?

To apply multiple UPDATE statements, you can place them all in a stored proc and/or wrap them in a transaction and loop through them in your ASP code.

Cheers,
Andrew