Inside Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008: T-SQL Querying

Inserting Data

In this section, I’ll cover several subjects related to inserting data, including the enhanced VALUES clause, the SELECT INTO statement, the BULK rowset provider, minimally logged inserts, the INSERT EXEC statement, and sequence mechanisms.

Enhanced VALUES Clause

Traditionally the VALUES clause was used in SQL Server to insert a single row into a table. SQL Server 2008 enhances the VALUES clause in two ways—you can now use the VALUES clause in an INSERT statement to insert multiple rows into a table, and you can also use the VALUES clause to define a virtual derived table. Because the VALUES clause can be used to construct a virtual table, it is also known as a table value constructor. Each row specification within the clause is called ...