Sometimes loading new data or even changes into a table just isn’t going to work. You need a complete reload. A summary table of data from the previous month, for example. It just doesn’t make sense to do an update. You delete/truncate and you re-load. Unfortunately, this leaves the table unusable for a period of time, and depending on your usage and load time that downtime may not be acceptable.

Now if this table is paritioned you’d use SWITCH and bring in a new partition.

For those that don’t know, when a table is partitioned, you can create a new empty partition, and a new empty table, load the table, make the table exactly match the partition (structure, check constraints, & indexes for example) and you can SWITCH it in. The SWITCH part is a metadata operation and is fast!

But what do you do if the table isn’t partitioned? Well, I was having a conversation with Andy Mallon (b/t) and he reminded me of something.

Technically all tables are partitioned. Go take a look at the system view sys.partitions. In it, you will find an entry for every table partitioned or not. Those that are not partitioned only have a single entry for partition 1. As a result, you can, in fact, SWITCH into an empty table. So for example (of course):

-- Set up the initial table
CREATE TABLE dbo.DestinationTable (
	Id INT NOT NULL IDENTITY(1,1) CONSTRAINT pk_DestinationTable PRIMARY KEY,
	Col1 varchar(50) CONSTRAINT df_DestinationTable DEFAULT(''),
	Col2 varchar(50) CONSTRAINT ck_DestinationTable CHECK (Col2 IN ('Yes','No'))
	);
CREATE INDEX ix_DestinationTable ON dbo.DestinationTable(Col1);
GRANT SELECT ON dbo.DestinationTable TO Doc;
GO
CREATE TRIGGER dbo.trDestinationTable
    ON [dbo].[DestinationTable]
    FOR DELETE, INSERT, UPDATE
    AS
    BEGIN
    SET NOCOUNT ON
    END;
GO

INSERT INTO dbo.DestinationTable VALUES ('123','Yes'),
		('789','Yes'),('345','Yes'),('901','No');
GO

In order to do the swap we need another table that’s identical (almost) but with different data.

CREATE TABLE dbo.LoadTable (
	Id INT NOT NULL IDENTITY(1,1) CONSTRAINT pk_LoadTable PRIMARY KEY,
	Col1 varchar(50),
	Col2 varchar(50) CONSTRAINT ck_LoadTable CHECK (Col2 IN ('Yes','No'))
	);
GO
INSERT INTO dbo.LoadTable VALUES ('abc','No'),
		('ghi','No'),('mno','Yes'),('stu','No');
GO
CREATE INDEX ix_LoadTable ON dbo.LoadTable(Col1);
GO

Notice that I have the same indexes, the same check constraints, and the same table structure. I do not have the same default constraints, triggers, and permissions. (I do not promise this is the extent of the requirements for SWITCHing just part of it.) Also I created my non-clustered indexes (NCIs) after loading the data. In some cases, this can be quite a bit faster, particularly with large amounts of data. If you are going to be doing this on a regular database I recommend testing it both ways.

Now let’s move the data into the DestinationTable.

-- Before
SELECT * FROM dbo.DestinationTable;
GO
-- Clean out the old data
TRUNCATE TABLE dbo.DestinationTable;
-- Normally there is a PARTITION # at the end of the statement
-- In this case, it isn't necessary.  You can include it but it
-- will give you a warning that it's been ignored because the 
-- table isn't actually partitioned.
ALTER TABLE dbo.LoadTable SWITCH TO dbo.DestinationTable;
GO
-- After
SELECT * FROM dbo.DestinationTable;
GO

And again, remember that TRUNCATE and SWITCH are both fast operations. In fact, table size will have a very very limited effect on this part of the process, meaning that the actual down time for the users is negligable. (Subsecond or maybe seconds).