patternMinor

Insert if something changed other than specific column

Submitted by: @import:stackexchange-dba·Mar 10, 2026·

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insertcolumnthanspecificotherchangedsomething

Problem

I have a table with many columns but my snippet is simplified. I have the trigger shown below but how can I have it so that nothing is inserted if only the created_at column has changed?

ALTER TRIGGER [dbo].[t_upd_insert]
ON [dbo].[Player]
FOR INSERT, UPDATE
AS
SET XACT_ABORT, NOCOUNT ON;

BEGIN
INSERT INTO dbo.Changes (
            [name]
            [created_at]
       )
SELECT 
            ins.[name],
            ins.[created_at]                
FROM INSERTED ins

I could do a WHERE name != ins.[name] for each column but there are a lot of columns and tables that need this; is there a shorter syntax?

EDIT
I've tried adding

WHERE
      [name] != ins.[name] OR 
      [age] != ins.[age]
      ....

but that doesn't work either. I thought that would be the naive method but that doesn't work.

Solution

ALTER TRIGGER [dbo].[t_upd_insert]
ON [dbo].[Player]
FOR INSERT, UPDATE
AS
SET XACT_ABORT, NOCOUNT ON;

BEGIN
IF (update(name))
BEGIN
  INSERT INTO dbo.Changes (
            [name]
            [created_at]
       )
  SELECT 
            ins.[name],
            ins.[created_at]                
  FROM INSERTED ins
END

Code Snippets

ALTER TRIGGER [dbo].[t_upd_insert]
ON [dbo].[Player]
FOR INSERT, UPDATE
AS
SET XACT_ABORT, NOCOUNT ON;


BEGIN
IF (update(name))
BEGIN
  INSERT INTO dbo.Changes (
            [name]
            [created_at]
       )
  SELECT 
            ins.[name],
            ins.[created_at]                
  FROM INSERTED ins
END

Context

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#142542, answer score: 2

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