I'm looking for a smarter way to have a list of values as a table in Oracle.
What I do nowadays is
select 'value1' as val from dual
union
select 'value2' from dual
What I'm hoping for is some function/way/magic, that I'll do for example
select 'value1', 'value2' from dual -- + some additional magic
I'm looking for non-PL/SQL way which I think is overkill, but I'm not saying definite no to PL/SQL if that's the only option, but I can look here Create an Oracle function that returns a table for inspiration for PL/SQL. But extra table to have a list seems still easier to maintain than PL/SQL.
The motivation for not using select distict from transactional table is that I want to have a defined list of values, and with that approach, I can miss those I expect there but have no records in the table.
The expected number of elements in the list is several tens of records (like 30).
Here is one option:
select column_value
from table(sys.dbms_debug_vc2coll('value1', 'value2', 'value3', 'value4'));
Starting Oracle 12.2, you don't need the table function:
select column_value
from sys.dbms_debug_vc2coll('value1', 'value2', 'value3', 'value4');
Or yet another, similar:
SQL> select column_value
2 from table(sys.odcivarchar2list('Little', 'Foot', 'Scott', 'Tiger'))
3 order by column_value;
COLUMN_VALUE
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Foot
Little
Scott
Tiger
SQL>
Starting with Oracle 12c you could use JSON_TABLE for that:
select *
from json_table('["value1", "value2"]', '$[*]'
columns val varchar(20) path '$');
If you aren't on 12c and can't use json_table (or even if you are/can but don't want to) you could use an XML sequence via xmltable instead:
select *
from xmltable('"value1", "value2", "value3"');
Result Sequence
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
value1
value2
value3
I'd probably use an ODCI collection by default, but might be interesting to compare how all of these options compare with large data volumes - with 30 values you might not be able to see much of a difference.
Also, You can use the connect by query:
SQL> select regexp_substr('VALUE1,VALUE2','[^,]+', 1, level) from dual
2 connect by level <= regexp_count('VALUE1,VALUE2', '[^,]+');
REGEXP_SUBSTR('VALUE1,VALUE2','[^,]+',1,LEVEL)
----------------------------------------------------
VALUE1
VALUE2
SQL>
While inserting multiple rows into a table using the following style :
insert all
into ghazal_current (GhazalName,Rating) values('Ajab Apna Haal Hota Jo Visaal-e-Yaar Hota',5)
into ghazal_current (GhazalName,Rating) values('Apne Hothon Par Sajana Chahta Hun',4)
into ghazal_current (GhazalName,Rating) values('Shaam Se Aankh Mein Nami Si Hai',4)
into ghazal_current (GhazalName,Rating) values('Tumhe Yaad Ho Ke Na Yaad Ho',3)
select 1 from dual;
What does the statement select 1 from dual mean ? What is it here for ?
DUAL is a built-in table, useful because it is guaranteed to return only one row. This means DUAL may be used to get pseudo-columns such as user or sysdate, the results of calculations and the like. The owner of DUAL is SYS but it can be accessed by every user. DUAL is well-covered in the documentation. Find out more.
In your case, SELECT 1 FROM DUAL; will simply returns 1. You need it because the INSERT ALL syntax demands a SELECT clause but you are not querying the input values from a table.
Brief re-introduction to one-row tables
Some SQL databases require all values to come FROM a table or table-like object, whereas others permit queries to construct values ex nihilo:
-- MySQL, sqlite, PostgreSQL, HSQLdb, and many others permit
-- a "naked" select:
SELECT 1;
-- Others *require* a FROM target, like Oracle.
SELECT 1 FROM DUAL;
-- ...and Firebird/Interbase:
SELECT 1 FROM RDB$DATABASE;
-- ...and DB2:
SELECT 1 FROM SYSIBM.SYSDUMMY1;
Here the cardinality of DUAL is important. If it had more than one row, your result set would have more than one row. What happens, for example, when you SELECT 1 FROM A_Table_With_Ten_Rows?
Why DUAL is used here
The SQL construct VALUES (<row-value-expression>) is a row value constructor. VALUES (1, 2, 3) "creates" a row of values just as SELECT 1, 2, 3 does.
Oracle, of course, requires that these values come FROM somewhere.
As a demonstration, instead of SELECTing from DUAL at the end of the INSERT ALL, try a table with N rows, and you'll see that each VALUES() row is inserted N times.
There are some samples about using dual in Queries:
select sysdate from dual /--it returns date of system
SELECT chr(223) FROM dual /--it returns character of Asciهi code
select my_sequence.nextval from dual; /-- It returns the next value of a sequence
select to_char(sysdate,'yyyy/mm/dd','nls_calendar=persian')from dual
/--returns persian date of system
I'm looking for the best way to select numbers directly from an in clause.
Basically like:
SELECT * FROM (2,6,1,8);
That doesn't work. I can do it this way:
SELECT Lv FROM ( SELECT Level LV
FROM DUAL
CONNECT BY Level < 20)
WHERE Lv IN (2,6,1,8);
But that seems to be a bit clunky. Is there a more elegant way?
You can do
select column_value from table(sys.dbms_debug_vc2coll(1,2,3,4,5));
but that actually returns a varchar2. You can create your own TYPE and use that
create type tab_num is table of number;
/
select column_value from table(tab_num(1,2,3,4,5));
It's also worth looking at the MODEL clause. It looks complicated, but it is very good at generating data
SELECT x from dual
MODEL DIMENSION BY (1 AS z) MEASURES (1 x)
RULES ITERATE (7) (x[ITERATION_NUMBER]=ITERATION_NUMBER+1)
It's more elegant if you materialize an auxiliary numbers table:
SELECT num FROM numbers WHERE num IN (2,6,1,8);
And this is also useful when combined with another table.
For instance, I've had a case where I needed to populate large configuration tables with changes from piecewise results:
Big SP or Excel sheet or report identifies missing cost centers in config gives a large set of results which need to be inserted with varying data in some groups.
Paste partial results into a individual comma separated lists:
INSERT INTO {stuff}
SELECT {stuff}, 130 as line_item
FROM numbers
WHERE numbers.num IN ({pasted a section of results})
INSERT INTO {stuff}
SELECT {stuff}, 135 as line_item
FROM numbers
WHERE numbers.num IN ({pasted another section of results})
If you don't explicitly need the IN clause, you could use UNION:
select 2 from dual
union
select 6 from dual
union
select 1 from dual
union
select 8 from dual
There is a more elegant variant to INSERT multiple rows into a table:
INSERT ALL
INTO table (col) VALUES ('a')
INTO table (col) VALUES ('b')
INTO table (col) VALUES ('c')
SELECT * FROM dual;
But I don't know a way to do that for a SELECT.
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?
Try:
INSERT INTO table1 ( column1 )
SELECT col1
FROM table2
This is standard ANSI SQL and should work on any DBMS
It definitely works for:
Oracle
MS SQL Server
MySQL
Postgres
SQLite v3
Teradata
DB2
Sybase
Vertica
HSQLDB
H2
AWS RedShift
SAP HANA
Google Spanner
Claude Houle's answer: should work fine, and you can also have multiple columns and other data as well:
INSERT INTO table1 ( column1, column2, someInt, someVarChar )
SELECT table2.column1, table2.column2, 8, 'some string etc.'
FROM table2
WHERE table2.ID = 7;
I've only used this syntax with Access, SQL 2000/2005/Express, MySQL, and PostgreSQL, so those should be covered. It should also work with SQLite3.
To get only one value in a multi value INSERT from another table I did the following in SQLite3:
INSERT INTO column_1 ( val_1, val_from_other_table )
VALUES('val_1', (SELECT val_2 FROM table_2 WHERE val_2 = something))
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.
Two approaches for insert into with select sub-query.
With SELECT subquery returning results with One row.
With SELECT subquery returning results with Multiple rows.
1. Approach for With SELECT subquery returning results with one row.
INSERT INTO <table_name> (<field1>, <field2>, <field3>)
VALUES ('DUMMY1', (SELECT <field> FROM <table_name> ),'DUMMY2');
In this case, it assumes SELECT Sub-query returns only one row of result based on WHERE condition or SQL aggregate functions like SUM, MAX, AVG etc. Otherwise it will throw error
2. Approach for With SELECT subquery returning results with multiple rows.
INSERT INTO <table_name> (<field1>, <field2>, <field3>)
SELECT 'DUMMY1', <field>, 'DUMMY2' FROM <table_name>;
The second approach will work for both the cases.
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);
Instead of VALUES part of INSERT query, just use SELECT query as below.
INSERT INTO table1 ( column1 , 2, 3... )
SELECT col1, 2, 3... FROM table2
Most of the databases follow the basic syntax,
INSERT INTO TABLE_NAME
SELECT COL1, COL2 ...
FROM TABLE_YOU_NEED_TO_TAKE_FROM
;
Every database I have used follow this syntax namely, DB2, SQL Server, MY SQL, PostgresQL
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.
This is another example using values with select:
INSERT INTO table1(desc, id, email)
SELECT "Hello World", 3, email FROM table2 WHERE ...
Just use parenthesis for SELECT clause into INSERT. For example like this :
INSERT INTO Table1 (col1, col2, your_desired_value_from_select_clause, col3)
VALUES (
'col1_value',
'col2_value',
(SELECT col_Table2 FROM Table2 WHERE IdTable2 = 'your_satisfied_value_for_col_Table2_selected'),
'col3_value'
);
Simple insertion when table column sequence is known:
Insert into Table1
values(1,2,...)
Simple insertion mentioning column:
Insert into Table1(col2,col4)
values(1,2)
Bulk insertion when number of selected columns of a table(#table2) are equal to insertion table(Table1)
Insert into Table1 {Column sequence}
Select * -- column sequence should be same.
from #table2
Bulk insertion when you want to insert only into desired column of a table(table1):
Insert into Table1 (Column1,Column2 ....Desired Column from Table1)
Select Column1,Column2..desired column from #table2
from #table2
Here is another example where source is taken using more than one table:
INSERT INTO cesc_pf_stmt_ext_wrk(
PF_EMP_CODE ,
PF_DEPT_CODE ,
PF_SEC_CODE ,
PF_PROL_NO ,
PF_FM_SEQ ,
PF_SEQ_NO ,
PF_SEP_TAG ,
PF_SOURCE)
SELECT
PFl_EMP_CODE ,
PFl_DEPT_CODE ,
PFl_SEC ,
PFl_PROL_NO ,
PF_FM_SEQ ,
PF_SEQ_NO ,
PFl_SEP_TAG ,
PF_SOURCE
FROM cesc_pf_stmt_ext,
cesc_pfl_emp_master
WHERE pfl_sep_tag LIKE '0'
AND pfl_emp_code=pf_emp_code(+);
COMMIT;
Here's how to insert from multiple tables. This particular example is where you have a mapping table in a many to many scenario:
insert into StudentCourseMap (StudentId, CourseId)
SELECT Student.Id, Course.Id FROM Student, Course
WHERE Student.Name = 'Paddy Murphy' AND Course.Name = 'Basket weaving for beginners'
(I realise matching on the student name might return more than one value but you get the idea. Matching on something other than an Id is necessary when the Id is an Identity column and is unknown.)
You could try this if you want to insert all column using SELECT * INTO table.
SELECT *
INTO Table2
FROM Table1;
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.
This worked for me:
insert into table1 select * from table2
The sentence is a bit different from Oracle's.
INSERT INTO yourtable
SELECT fielda, fieldb, fieldc
FROM donortable;
This works on all DBMS
For Microsoft SQL Server, I will recommend learning to interpret the SYNTAX provided on MSDN. With Google it's easier than ever, to look for syntax.
For this particular case, try
Google: insert site:microsoft.com
The first result will be http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174335.aspx
scroll down to the example ("Using the SELECT and EXECUTE options to insert data from other tables") if you find it difficult to interpret the syntax given at the top of the page.
[ WITH <common_table_expression> [ ,...n ] ]
INSERT
{
[ TOP ( expression ) [ PERCENT ] ]
[ INTO ]
{ <object> | rowset_function_limited
[ WITH ( <Table_Hint_Limited> [ ...n ] ) ]
}
{
[ ( column_list ) ]
[ <OUTPUT Clause> ]
{ VALUES ( { DEFAULT | NULL | expression } [ ,...n ] ) [ ,...n ]
| derived_table <<<<------- Look here ------------------------
| execute_statement <<<<------- Look here ------------------------
| <dml_table_source> <<<<------- Look here ------------------------
| DEFAULT VALUES
}
}
}
[;]
This should be applicable for any other RDBMS available there. There is no point in remembering all the syntax for all products IMO.
INSERT INTO FIRST_TABLE_NAME (COLUMN_NAME)
SELECT COLUMN_NAME
FROM ANOTHER_TABLE_NAME
WHERE CONDITION;
Best way to insert multiple records from any other tables.
INSERT INTO dbo.Users
( UserID ,
Full_Name ,
Login_Name ,
Password
)
SELECT UserID ,
Full_Name ,
Login_Name ,
Password
FROM Users_Table
(INNER JOIN / LEFT JOIN ...)
(WHERE CONDITION...)
(OTHER CLAUSE)
select *
into tmp
from orders
Looks nice, but works only if tmp doesn't exists (creates it and fills). (SQL sever)
To insert into existing tmp table:
set identity_insert tmp on
insert tmp
([OrderID]
,[CustomerID]
,[EmployeeID]
,[OrderDate]
,[RequiredDate]
,[ShippedDate]
,[ShipVia]
,[Freight]
,[ShipName]
,[ShipAddress]
,[ShipCity]
,[ShipRegion]
,[ShipPostalCode]
,[ShipCountry] )
select * from orders
set identity_insert tmp off
IF you want to insert some data into a table without want to write column name.
INSERT INTO CUSTOMER_INFO
(SELECT CUSTOMER_NAME,
MOBILE_NO,
ADDRESS
FROM OWNER_INFO cm)
Where the tables are:
CUSTOMER_INFO || OWNER_INFO
----------------------------------------||-------------------------------------
CUSTOMER_NAME | MOBILE_NO | ADDRESS || CUSTOMER_NAME | MOBILE_NO | ADDRESS
--------------|-----------|--------- || --------------|-----------|---------
A | +1 | DC || B | +55 | RR
Result:
CUSTOMER_INFO || OWNER_INFO
----------------------------------------||-------------------------------------
CUSTOMER_NAME | MOBILE_NO | ADDRESS || CUSTOMER_NAME | MOBILE_NO | ADDRESS
--------------|-----------|--------- || --------------|-----------|---------
A | +1 | DC || B | +55 | RR
B | +55 | RR ||
If you go the INSERT VALUES route to insert multiple rows, make sure to delimit the VALUES into sets using parentheses, so:
INSERT INTO `receiving_table`
(id,
first_name,
last_name)
VALUES
(1002,'Charles','Babbage'),
(1003,'George', 'Boole'),
(1001,'Donald','Chamberlin'),
(1004,'Alan','Turing'),
(1005,'My','Widenius');
Otherwise MySQL objects that "Column count doesn't match value count at row 1", and you end up writing a trivial post when you finally figure out what to do about it.
If you create table firstly you can use like this;
select * INTO TableYedek From Table
This metot insert values but differently with creating new copy table.
In informix it works as Claude said:
INSERT INTO table (column1, column2)
VALUES (value1, value2);
Postgres supports next:
create table company.monitor2 as select * from company.monitor;