Sql-server – Query to compare two column of table 1 with two column of table 2 and update the third column in table 1 as ‘y’ if the record matches

Not going to go through what you're trying to accomplish, but for your update, you're using a TOP without an ORDER BY. While SQL Server doesn't guarantee ordering for such queries, it doesn't just randomly choose, either. If you want to force a random row to be returned, you'll need to order by a row-level random number. For that, you can use ORDER BY ABS( CHECKSUM( NEWID() ) ).

Try it out against sys.objects to see the behavior of explicitly ordering randomly.

SELECT  TOP 1 name
FROM    sys.objects
ORDER BY ABS( CHECKSUM( NEWID() ) );

And good luck with whatever it is you're doing.

Edit:

@jean points out in the comments just NEWID() is all that is necessary, which is 100% correct, I just muscle-memory the ABS( CHECKSUM() ) since I tend to need row-level randomization with a % operator.

Edit 2:

So something like this, then?

UPDATE  t
    SET CategoryID = nt.CategoryID
FROM    dbo.Topic t
INNER JOIN (    SELECT  t.ID, ucl.CategoryID, 
                        Ordinal = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (
                            PARTITION BY t.ID
                            ORDER BY NEWID() )
                FROM    dbo.Topic t
                INNER JOIN dbo.UserCategoryLink ucl
                    ON  t.UserID = ucl.UserID ) nt
    ON  t.ID = nt.ID
WHERE   nt.Ordinal = 1;

This should update for you as expected. Apologies for the number of character functions - I'm sure it could be improved via a REGEXP_SUBSTR call but I'm afraid I'm a bit busy at the moment.

MERGE INTO olddata old
USING (SELECT * FROM newdata) new 
ON (  old.ename = new.ename
   OR substr(old.ename,1,length(old.ename)-length(substr(old.ename,instr(old.ename,'.'),length(old.ename)))) = new.ename)
WHEN MATCHED THEN UPDATE SET old.salary = new.salary, old.job = new.job

The first qualifier in the ON clause will match any that have the same format name and the second will take the string from OLDDATA.ENAME before the first dot to compare it to the NEWDATA.ENAME that doesn't contain the domain name. Hope this works for you (it did for my quick tests on the data you supplied)

EDIT: Here's my simple test:

  1* SELECT * FROM olddata
SQL> /

     EMPNO ENAME                          JOB                      SALARY HIREDATE
---------- ------------------------------ -------------------- ---------- ---------
      7369 smith.domain.com               clerk                      1300 17-DEC-80
      7645 jones.domain.com               Manager                    5000 01-JAN-80
      7549 allen.domain.com               sales                      1800 01-JAN-81

SQL> SELECT * FROM newdata
  2  /

ENAME                          JOB                      SALARY
------------------------------ -------------------- ----------
jones.domain.com               Manager                    6000
allen                          sales                      2000
smith                          clerk                      2000

SQL> MERGE INTO olddata old
  2  USING (SELECT * FROM newdata) new
  3     ON (  old.ename = new.ename
  4        OR substr(old.ename,1,length(old.ename)-length(substr(old.ename,instr(old.ename,'.'),length(old.ename)))) = new.ename)
  5  WHEN MATCHED THEN UPDATE SET old.salary = new.salary, old.job = new.job
SQL> /

3 rows merged.

SQL> SELECT * FROM olddata
  2  /

     EMPNO ENAME                          JOB                      SALARY HIREDATE
---------- ------------------------------ -------------------- ---------- ---------
      7369 smith.domain.com               clerk                      2000 17-DEC-80
      7645 jones.domain.com               Manager                    6000 01-JAN-80
      7549 allen.domain.com               sales                      2000 01-JAN-81

SQL>

EDIT: Thanks to @Guarava for pointing out that the string operations can easily be removed. I was just overthinking it. The following MERGE is much more concise;

MERGE INTO olddata old
USING (SELECT * FROM newdata) new
ON (  old.ename = new.ename
   OR old.ename LIKE new.ename||'.%')
WHEN MATCHED THEN UPDATE SET old.salary = new.salary, old.job = new.job