sql server - How can I do an UPDATE statement with JOIN in SQL?

You'll get the best performance if you forget the where clause and place all conditions in the ON expression.

I think this is because the query first has to join the tables then runs the where clause on that, so if you can reduce what is required to join then that's the fasted way to get the results/do the udpate.

Example

Scenario

You have a table of users. They can log in using their username or email or account_number. These accounts can be active (1) or inactive (0). This table has 50000 rows

You then have a table of users to disable at one go because you find out they've all done something bad. This table however, has one column with usernames, emails and account numbers mixed. It also has a "has_run" indicator which needs to be set to 1 (true) when it has been run

Query

UPDATE users User
    INNER JOIN
        blacklist_users BlacklistUser
        ON
        (
            User.username = BlacklistUser.account_ref
            OR
            User.email = BlacklistedUser.account_ref
            OR
            User.phone_number = BlacklistUser.account_ref
            AND
            User.is_active = 1
            AND
            BlacklistUser.has_run = 0
        )
    SET
        User.is_active = 0,
        BlacklistUser.has_run = 1;

Reasoning

If we had to join on just the OR conditions it would essentially need to check each row 4 times to see if it should join, and potentially return a lot more rows. However, by giving it more conditions it can "skip" a lot of rows if they don't meet all the conditions when joining.

Bonus

It's more readable. All the conditions are in one place and the rows to update are in one place