Re: Semantic usage of Insert and Update is wrong

[Zu Kote]

Interesting perspective. I agree that from a conceptual or even logical modeling standpoint, treating INSERT as the initializer and UPDATE as the modifier makes sense. But as you noted, SQL doesn't enforce that semantic boundary—INSERT always creates a new row, regardless of what's partially populated, and there's no native mechanism for "filling in the blanks" of an existing row without using UPDATE. I suppose that’s one of the trade-offs between theoretical data modeling and practical implementation.