Re: MERGE vs REPLACE

> The problem I try to solve is something along: a bunch of clients try
to update a count, and ONE of them must initialize > the count if it
does not exist... this can't be done with current infrastructure without
race conditions.

The solution without merge but a unique key in other db's is:

update
if no rows updated insert if duplicate key   update   if no rows updated goto insert

note, that the counter updates need to be of the form set x = x + ?
where key=y
do you see a potential race condition with this ?
In pg you also need a savepoint before the insert for this to work.

Depending on the ratio of insert vs update we also start with insert
when
the insert succeeds more that 50% (I would use a higher percentage with
pg though):

insert if duplicate key   update   if no rows updated goto insert

Andreas