MySQL #1093 – You can’t specify target table ‘giveaways’ for update in FROM clause

MySQLmysql-error-1093selectsqlsubquery

I tried:

UPDATE giveaways SET winner = '1' WHERE ID = (SELECT MAX(ID) FROM giveaways)

But it gives:

#1093 – You can't specify target table 'giveaways' for update in FROM clause

This article seems relevant but I can't adapt it to my query. How can I get it to work?

Best Answer

Based on the information in the article you linked to this should work:

update giveaways set winner='1'
where Id = (select Id from (select max(Id) as id from giveaways) as t)

Related Solutions

MySQL Error 1093 – Can’t specify target table for update in FROM clause

Update: This answer covers the general error classification. For a more specific answer about how to best handle the OP's exact query, please see other answers to this question

In MySQL, you can't modify the same table which you use in the SELECT part.
This behaviour is documented at: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/update.html

Maybe you can just join the table to itself

If the logic is simple enough to re-shape the query, lose the subquery and join the table to itself, employing appropriate selection criteria. This will cause MySQL to see the table as two different things, allowing destructive changes to go ahead.

UPDATE tbl AS a
INNER JOIN tbl AS b ON ....
SET a.col = b.col

Alternatively, try nesting the subquery deeper into a from clause ...

If you absolutely need the subquery, there's a workaround, but it's ugly for several reasons, including performance:

UPDATE tbl SET col = (
  SELECT ... FROM (SELECT.... FROM) AS x);

The nested subquery in the FROM clause creates an implicit temporary table, so it doesn't count as the same table you're updating.

... but watch out for the query optimiser

However, beware that from MySQL 5.7.6 and onward, the optimiser may optimise out the subquery, and still give you the error. Luckily, the optimizer_switch variable can be used to switch off this behaviour; although I couldn't recommend doing this as anything more than a short term fix, or for small one-off tasks.

SET optimizer_switch = 'derived_merge=off';

Thanks to Peter V. Mørch for this advice in the comments.

Example technique was from Baron Schwartz, originally published at Nabble, paraphrased and extended here.

SQL update from one Table to another based on a ID match

I believe an UPDATE FROM with a JOIN will help:

MS SQL

UPDATE
    Sales_Import
SET
    Sales_Import.AccountNumber = RAN.AccountNumber
FROM
    Sales_Import SI
INNER JOIN
    RetrieveAccountNumber RAN
ON 
    SI.LeadID = RAN.LeadID;

MySQL and MariaDB

UPDATE
    Sales_Import SI,
    RetrieveAccountNumber RAN
SET
    SI.AccountNumber = RAN.AccountNumber
WHERE
    SI.LeadID = RAN.LeadID;