INSERT SELECT

Copy data between tables. This statement inserts the result set of a SELECT query directly into a target table, enabling efficient bulk data transfer.

Syntax

INSERT [LOW_PRIORITY | HIGH_PRIORITY] [IGNORE]
    [INTO] tbl_name [(col_name,...)]
    SELECT ...
    [ ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE col_name=expr, ... ]

Description

With INSERT ... SELECT, you can quickly insert many rows into a table from one or more other tables. For example:

INSERT INTO tbl_temp2 (fld_id)
  SELECT tbl_temp1.fld_order_id
  FROM tbl_temp1 WHERE tbl_temp1.fld_order_id > 100;

tbl_name can also be specified in the form db_name.tbl_name (see Identifier Qualifiers). This allows to copy rows between different databases.

If the new table has a primary key or UNIQUE indexes, you can use IGNORE to handle duplicate key errors during the query. The newer values will not be inserted if an identical value already exists.

REPLACE can be used instead of INSERT to prevent duplicates on UNIQUE indexes by deleting old values. In that case, ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE cannot be used.

INSERT ... SELECT works for tables which already exist. To create a table for a given resultset, you can use CREATE TABLE ... SELECT.

See Also

• INSERT

• INSERT DELAYED

• HIGH_PRIORITY and LOW_PRIORITY

• Concurrent Inserts

• INSERT - Default & Duplicate Values

• INSERT IGNORE

• INSERT ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE

_{This page is licensed: GPLv2, originally from fill_help_tables.sql}