Firebird 2.1 Language Reference Update

DML statements
Description: If you give a table or view an alias in a Firebird 2.0 or above statement, you must use the alias, not
the table name, if you want to qualify fields from that relation.
Examples:
Correct usage:
update Fruit set soort = 'pisang' where ...
update Fruit set Fruit.soort = 'pisang' where ...
update Fruit F set soort = 'pisang' where ...
update Fruit F set F.soort = 'pisang' where ...
No longer possible:
update Fruit F set Fruit.soort = 'pisang' where ...
RETURNING
Available in: DSQL, PSQL
Added in: 2.1
Description: An UPDATE statement modifying at most one row may optionally include a RETURNING clause
in order to return values from the updated row. The clause, if present, need not contain all the modified columns
and may also contain other columns or expressions. The returned values reflect any changes that may have been
made in BEFORE tiggers, but not those in AFTER triggers. OLD.fieldname and NEW.fieldname may both be
used in the list of columns to return; for field names not preceded by either of these, the new value is returned.
Example:
Notes:
update Scholars
set firstname = 'Hugh', lastname = 'Pickering'
where firstname = 'Henry' and lastname = 'Higgins'
returning id, old.lastname, new.lastname
• In DSQL, a statement with a RETURNING clause always returns exactly one row. If no record was actually
updated, the fields in this row are all NULL. This behaviour may change in a later version of Firebird. In
PSQL, if no row was updated, nothing is returned, and the receiving variables keep their existing values.
ROWS
Available in: DSQL, PSQL
Added in: 2.0
86