Beginning Microsoft SQL Server 2008 ... - S3 Tech Training

Chapter 3: The Foundation Statements of T-SQL
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For your first insert, we’ll eliminate the optional column list and allow SQL Server to assume we’re providing
something for every column:
INSERT INTO Stores
VALUES
(‘TEST’, ‘Test Store’, ‘1234 Anywhere Street’, ‘Here’, ‘NY’, ‘00319’);
As stated earlier, unless we provide a different column list (we’ll cover how to provide a column list
shortly), all the values have to be supplied in the same order as the columns are defined in the table. After
executing this query, you should see a statement that tells you that one row was affected by your query.
Now, just for fun, try running the exact same query a second time. You’ll get the following error:
Msg 2627, Level 14, State 1, Line 1
Violation of PRIMARY KEY constraint ‘PK__Stores__1387E197’. Cannot insert duplicate
key in object ‘dbo.Stores’.
The statement has been terminated.
Why did it work the first time and not the second? Because this table has a primary key that does not
allow duplicate values for the StoreCode field. As long as we changed that one field, we could have left
the rest of the columns alone and it would have taken the new row. We’ll see more of primary keys in
the chapters on design and constraints.
So let’s see what we inserted:
SELECT *
FROM Stores
WHERE StoreCode = ‘TEST’;
This query yields us exactly what we inserted:
StoreCode Name Address City State Zip
--------- ------------ ----------------------- -------------------- ----- -----
TEST Test Store 1234 Anywhere Street Here NY 00319
(1 row(s) affected)
Note that I’ve trimmed a few spaces off the end of each column to help it fit on a page neatly, but the
true data is just as we expected it to be.
Now let’s try it again with modifications for inserting into specific columns:
INSERT INTO Stores
(StoreCode, Name, City, State, Zip)
VALUES
(‘TST2’, ‘Test Store’, ‘Here’, ‘NY’, ‘00319’);
Note that on the line with the data values we’ve changed just two things. First, we’ve changed the value
we are inserting into the primary key column so it won’t generate an error. Second, we’ve eliminated the
value that was associated with the Address column, since we have omitted that column in our column list.
There are a few different instances where we can skip a column in a column list and not provide any data