>>>>Hi,
>>>>
>>>>Can you have one trigger for both INSTEAD OF DELETE and UPDATE, as shown in the title of this thread? And if yes, how would you distinguish inside the trigger if it was called by UPDATE or DELETE action?
>>>>
>>>>TIA.
>>>
>>>
>>>Of course you can, but both should be INSTEAD OF triggers.
>>>To distinguish which records are deleted, and which is updated you must use INSERTED and DELETED pseudo tables.
>>>All records that are in both tables are updated, all record that are only in DELETED table are deleted.
>>
>>Thank you, Borislav. Is there a way to check if INSERTED is empty? This way, if INSERTED is empty, I would know that the trigger was called by DELETE action. I am thinking of trying the syntax EMPTY( INSERTED ) but it is probably wrong.
>
>

>IF NOT EXISTS(SELECT * FROM INSERTED)
>   BEGIN
>   --- Only DELETED has records
>   END
>

Thank you very much!

I hope putting both Delete and Update triggers is an accepted practice (as I hope that a DBA will not look down on such practice). But as far as minimizing maintenance, I like this approach.