Conditional Trigger

what  do you mean by MAX row, can you please explain a little more...
it would be good, if you can give us some data as well...

Let's assume this is the data

ID    GroupID     Date
1      1                  1/1/2013
2      1                  1/2/2013
1      2                  1/1/2013
2      2                  1/2/2013

This is totally just dummy data, cause that's not really important.  Like I said, I know how to find a MAX of something, I just don't know how to add complex logic to a Trigger.

Anyway, let's say I want the ID of the row, grouped by GroupID, that has the most current date.  Then in the trigger it should have logic like this:   if the row that was updated is the max row (based on the logic I gave you for what a "max" row is) then also update Table Y

Perhaps this will help.  I have a table.  It currently has an insert Trigger on it.  So great, everytime a new row gets inserted, Table Y get's updated.  HOWEVER, we also run clean up processes on the table from time to time.  For instance, let's say we find that we had a bug that was causing erroneous data in that table, we might run a clean up process to fix it.  But that also could mean that the data in Table Y is incorrect.  I need to make sure that when the data gets updated that if the Max Row was one that was updated that Table Y is updated also.  Where Max Row = the most current row that was INSERTED.  Get it, I'm needing a work around for the fact that there isn't always a Insert Trigger in play.

I hope that makes sense.

I believe in this case, you are telling me the max row as the latest row (latest date).

if that is the case you can use the sample trigger logic below

create trigger trg_test
for insert,update,delete 
BEGIN

if exists ( select 1 from inserted)
BEGIN
   IF EXISTS ( SELECT 1 FROM <your table> Y, inserted I where Y.id = I.id and Y.groupId = I.groupID and I.DATE> Y.DATE)
--- do insert or update on your backup table here 

END


END

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it gets processed whenever the originating sql statement type gets executed

please explain to me what this means.  Keep in mind that I rarely have ever used a trigger in my life so I'm very much a noob with them.

Yep. Completely.  

So now let me regurgitate back to make sure I really am:

1) I create a INSERT trigger on a Table
2) an insert statement is run which inserts 50 rows
3) 50 rows get inserted into the table AND
4) sql takes a copy of those 50 rows and puts them in some sort of temp logical table
5) I then access the inserted logical tables and do what I will with that data

So, what is the performance cost of a trigger?  Cause I'm starting to think that I will want an INSERT trigger but not an UPDATE.  If I have to run a bulk update due to "bad data" I will just need to remember to update the data in the other table as well where the "other table" is the one I originally was going to change when the UPDATE trigger fired.

As usual, @Anthony Perkins was spot on with his assistance!