Insert

Insert is a widely-used command in the Structured Query Language (SQL) data manipulation language (DML) used by SQL Server and Oracle relational databases. The insert command is used for inserting one or more rows into a database table with specified table column values. The first DML command executed immediately after a table creation is the insert statement.

A normal insert statement may be implemented in two forms:

• INSERT INTO table_name VALUES (val1, val2, val3…). An example is: INSERT INTO Employee VALUES (1, John, 23);
• INSERT INTO table_name (column1, column2) VALUES (val1, val2, val3…). An example is: INSERT INTO Employee (Eid, Name, Age) VALUES (1, John, 23);

Column names identify columns that must be populated with specific values determined by VALUES clause expressions. The number VALUES clause values and names columns is the same. Table columns without specified insert statement values are assigned default values.

Insert operations can result in errors from defined column constraint violations or database inactivity. In both cases, exceptions are thrown and handled by error handlers that set appropriate values for error text, native errors, state and SQL code. If the target insert data column is set to a binary data type, such as BLOB, the input message is also in bit stream form. In rare cases, the input message may be in the Extensible Markup Language (XML) domain, where the message tree is serialized before an insert operation. Insert statements are also used in association with SELECT, WHEN, check options and return clauses.

This definition was written in the context of SQL