Hi All,
  I have a database where I need to update a load of tables that have a column named 'date' with values such as 11:11:2007, 12:11:2007, etc, to a universal integer value such as 20071111, 20071112, etc. I'm trying to figure out what the quickest and most efficient way to do this, as the database is BIG (in fact there are several versions of the database and some of them are very big).
  I've got code that increments the old date style, and have the first date for each table, so I can easily make a loop that starts at 01:01:2007 and increments each time until it gets to the current date.
  Something like:-
until ($date eq $today) {
    $dbh->do("update table set date=20070101 where date='01:01:2007'")
+;
    $date = nextdate($date);
}

[download]

Is going to take forever, and probably time out through CGI (to long a story as to why it would be called as CGI).
Help greatly appreciated

Lyle

Thanks to everyone, your replies have been most helpful

In reply to Perl and MySQL update question by cosmicperl

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