I think gleenn is talking about the abstraction known as "upsert". Namely, there exists some syntax for expressing "either insert if it doesn't exist or update

I think gleenn is talking about the abstraction known as "upsert". Namely, there exists some syntax for expressing "either insert if it doesn't exist or update if it does exist; determine existence by primary key." This process can be achieved in Postgres, but I'm not aware of any simple abstraction for it. But I could be wrong. Does there exist a stored procedure that can be generalized to the point of upsert abstractions in other relational databases? (In this thread, I see a stored procedure for a specific table/set of columns.)