Original Question

MySQL workbench allows one to define "inserts": rows to be inserted into the database on creation. It does this by adding lines such as

START TRANSACTION;
USE `someDB`;
INSERT INTO `someDB`.`countries` (`name`) VALUES ('South Africa');

COMMIT;

However, if the database, table and entry exists, this throws an error. Creation of tables does not, as workbench uses CREATE IF NOT EXISTS for those. Is there a way to get workbench to insert using INSERT...ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE?

Half Solution

Running the script with the force argument:

mysql user=xx password=xx --force < script.sql

Ignores such errors, and is thus a solution in my particular case. However, the actual question of modifying the type of INSERTS still stands (for interest)

See here