You can't specify target table for update in FROM clause

The problem is that MySQL, for whatever inane reason, doesn't allow you to write queries like this:

UPDATE myTable
SET myTable.A =
(
    SELECT B
    FROM myTable
    INNER JOIN ...
)

That is, if you're doing an UPDATE/INSERT/DELETE on a table, you can't reference that table in an inner query (you can however reference a field from that outer table...)

---

The solution is to replace the instance of myTable in the sub-query with (SELECT * FROM myTable), like this

UPDATE myTable
SET myTable.A =
(
    SELECT B
    FROM (SELECT * FROM myTable) AS something
    INNER JOIN ...
)

This apparently causes the necessary fields to be implicitly copied into a temporary table, so it's allowed.

I found this solution here. A note from that article:

You don’t want to just SELECT * FROM table in the subquery in real life; I just wanted to keep the examples simple. In reality, you should only be selecting the columns you need in that innermost query, and adding a good WHERE clause to limit the results, too.

You can make this in three steps:

CREATE TABLE test2 AS
SELECT PersId 
FROM pers p
WHERE (
  chefID IS NOT NULL 
  OR gehalt < (
    SELECT MAX (
      gehalt * 1.05
    )
    FROM pers MA
    WHERE MA.chefID = p.chefID
  )
)

...

UPDATE pers P
SET P.gehalt = P.gehalt * 1.05
WHERE PersId
IN (
  SELECT PersId
  FROM test2
)
DROP TABLE test2;

or

UPDATE Pers P, (
  SELECT PersId
  FROM pers p
  WHERE (
   chefID IS NOT NULL 
   OR gehalt < (
     SELECT MAX (
       gehalt * 1.05
     )
     FROM pers MA
     WHERE MA.chefID = p.chefID
   )
 )
) t
SET P.gehalt = P.gehalt * 1.05
WHERE p.PersId = t.PersId

In Mysql, you can not update one table by subquery the same table.

You can separate the query in two parts, or do

 UPDATE TABLE_A AS A
 INNER JOIN TABLE_A AS B ON A.field1 = B.field1
 SET field2 = ?