Insert into … values ( SELECT … FROM … )

Question

I am trying to INSERT INTO a table using the input from another table. Although this is entirely feasible for many database engines, I always seem to struggle to remember the correct syntax for the SQL engine of the day (MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, Informix, and DB2).

Is there a silver-bullet syntax coming from an SQL standard (for example, SQL-92) that would allow me to insert the values without worrying about the underlying database?

Answer 1

To add something in the first answer, when we want only few records from another table (in this example only one):

INSERT INTO TABLE1
(COLUMN1, COLUMN2, COLUMN3, COLUMN4) 
VALUES (value1, value2, 
(SELECT COLUMN_TABLE2 
FROM TABLE2
WHERE COLUMN_TABLE2 like "blabla"),
value4);

Answer 2

INSERT INTO yourtable
SELECT fielda, fieldb, fieldc
FROM donortable;

This works on all DBMS

Answer 3

I actually prefer the following in SQL Server 2008:

SELECT Table1.Column1, Table1.Column2, Table2.Column1, Table2.Column2, 'Some String' AS SomeString, 8 AS SomeInt
INTO Table3
FROM Table1 INNER JOIN Table2 ON Table1.Column1 = Table2.Column3

It eliminates the step of adding the Insert () set, and you just select which values go in the table.

Answer 4

INSERT INTO FIRST_TABLE_NAME (COLUMN_NAME)
SELECT  COLUMN_NAME
FROM    ANOTHER_TABLE_NAME 
WHERE CONDITION;

Answer 5

Both the answers I see work fine in Informix specifically, and are basically standard SQL. That is, the notation:

INSERT INTO target_table[(<column-list>)] SELECT ... FROM ...;

works fine with Informix and, I would expect, all the DBMS. (Once upon 5 or more years ago, this is the sort of thing that MySQL did not always support; it now has decent support for this sort of standard SQL syntax and, AFAIK, it would work OK on this notation.) The column list is optional but indicates the target columns in sequence, so the first column of the result of the SELECT will go into the first listed column, etc. In the absence of the column list, the first column of the result of the SELECT goes into the first column of the target table.

What can be different between systems is the notation used to identify tables in different databases - the standard has nothing to say about inter-database (let alone inter-DBMS) operations. With Informix, you can use the following notation to identify a table:

[dbase[@server]:][owner.]table

That is, you may specify a database, optionally identifying the server that hosts that database if it is not in the current server, followed by an optional owner, dot, and finally the actual table name. The SQL standard uses the term schema for what Informix calls the owner. Thus, in Informix, any of the following notations could identify a table:

table
"owner".table
dbase:table
dbase:owner.table
dbase@server:table
dbase@server:owner.table

The owner in general does not need to be quoted; however, if you do use quotes, you need to get the owner name spelled correctly - it becomes case-sensitive. That is:

someone.table
"someone".table
SOMEONE.table

all identify the same table. With Informix, there's a mild complication with MODE ANSI databases, where owner names are generally converted to upper-case (informix is the exception). That is, in a MODE ANSI database (not commonly used), you could write:

CREATE TABLE someone.table ( ... )

and the owner name in the system catalog would be "SOMEONE", rather than 'someone'. If you enclose the owner name in double quotes, it acts like a delimited identifier. With standard SQL, delimited identifiers can be used many places. With Informix, you can use them only around owner names -- in other contexts, Informix treats both single-quoted and double-quoted strings as strings, rather than separating single-quoted strings as strings and double-quoted strings as delimited identifiers. (Of course, just for completeness, there is an environment variable, DELIMIDENT, that can be set - to any value, but Y is safest - to indicate that double quotes always surround delimited identifiers and single quotes always surround strings.)

Note that MS SQL Server manages to use [delimited identifiers] enclosed in square brackets. It looks weird to me, and is certainly not part of the SQL standard.

Answer 6

This can be done without specifying the columns in the INSERT INTO part if you are supplying values for all columns in the SELECT part.

Let's say table1 has two columns. This query should work:

INSERT INTO table1
SELECT  col1, col2
FROM    table2

This WOULD NOT work (value for col2 is not specified):

INSERT INTO table1
SELECT  col1
FROM    table2

I'm using MS SQL Server. I don't know how other RDMS work.