• Using the INSERT Statement
  • Using the INSERT DEFAULT VALUES Statement
  • Using the INSERT VALUES Statement
  • USING the INSERT SELECT Statement
  • Leveraging Defaults
  • Using the INSERT EXEC Statement
• Using the SELECT INTO Statement
• The Bulk Copy Program-bcp
• USING THE BULK INSERT Statement
  • BATCHSIZE
  • CHECK_CONSTRAINTS
  • CODEPAGE
  • DATAFILETYPE
  • FIELDTERMINATOR
  • FIRETRIGGERS
  • FIRSTROW
  • FORMATFILE
  • KEEPIDENTITY
  • KEEPNULLS
  • KILOBYTES_PER_BATCH
  • LAST_ROW
  • MAXERRORS
  • ORDER
  • ROWS_PER_BATCH
  • ROWTERMINATOR
  • TABLOCK
• Loading Data
  • Normalizing Data
  • Generating Test Data

After creating a table in a database, there’s four main ways of filling them with data: 1.) using the INSERT statement, 2.) Using the BULK INSERT statement, 3.) Using the bulk copy utility (bcp) – the progenitor of the BULK INSERT statement, and 4.) using Data Transformation Services (DTS), which offeres a broad range of ways to load a table.

Using the INSERT statement: 

The INSERT statement can typicall be broken down into INSERT VALUES, INSERT SELECT, and INSERT EXEC. Here is the syntax for the INSERT Statement:

INSERT [INTO] 
{ 
 table_name WITH [table_hint_limited] […n]) 
 | view_name 
 | rowset_function_limited 
} 
{[(column_list)] 
 {VALUES ({DEFAULT 
    | NULL 
    | expression 
    } [,…n] 
) 
 | derived_table 
 | execute_statement 
 } 
} 
| DEFAULT VALUES 
[table_hint_limited]::= 
 {INDEX(index_val [,…n]) 
 | FASTFIRSTROW 
 | HOLDLOCK 
 | PAGLOCK 
 | READCOMMITED 
 | REPEATABLEREAD 
 | ROWLOCK 
 | SERIALIZABLE 
 | TABLOCK 
 | TABLOCKX 
 | UPDLOCK 
}