Skip to Main Content
Practical PostgreSQL
book

Practical PostgreSQL

by Joshua D. Drake, John C. Worsley
January 2002
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
640 pages
16h 39m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Practical PostgreSQL

Create Table As

Creates a new table built from data retrieved by a SELECT.

Synopsis

CREATE TABLE table [ ( column [, ...] ) ]
             AS select

Parameters

table

The name of the new table to be created.

column

The name of a column to create; you can specify multiple columns by including their names in a comma-delimited list. There should be the same number of columns specified as are returned by select.

select

A valid SELECT statement. The number of targets selected must match the number of columns in the optional column list preceding the AS clause.

Results

SELECT

The message returned on successful creation of, and insertion of row data into, table.

ERROR: CREATE TABLE/AS SELECT has mismatched column count

The error returned if the optional list of columns in parentheses contains a different number of rows than the select statement returns.

Description

Use the CREATE TABLE AS command to create a table from the contents of result set, such as a query on a table that already exists within the database. Both the column types, and row data for the new table, come from the SELECT command specified by select.

Note that, as of PostgreSQL 7.1.x, if you specify the optional column list within parentheses, you cannot use the asterisk (*) in the select statement.

Example

The following example creates a backup table (aptly named book_backup) from all of the columns taken from the books table:

booktown=# CREATE TABLE book_backup
booktown-#              AS SELECT * FROM books;
SELECT
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

PostgreSQL: Up and Running, 2nd Edition

PostgreSQL: Up and Running, 2nd Edition

Regina O. Obe, Leo S. Hsu
Learning PostgreSQL 11 - Third Edition

Learning PostgreSQL 11 - Third Edition

Christopher Travers, Andrey Volkov
Learn PostgreSQL

Learn PostgreSQL

Luca Ferrari, Enrico Pirozzi
PostgreSQL 13 Cookbook

PostgreSQL 13 Cookbook

Vallarapu Naga Avinash Kumar

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781449309770Supplemental ContentErrata Page