Inserting tuples

In its most basic form the INSERT INTO command adds a tuple to an existing table.

The syntax is:

INSERT INTO <Tablename> (<Attribute list>)
VALUES (<Valuelist>);

Please note that the attribute list can be omitted if a complete tuple is inserted.

With the INSERT command shown above, new tuples are inserted into the database. Often, the values to be inserted are the result of a request. For this situation the command can be changed as follows:

INSERT INTO <Tablename> (<Attribute list>)

SELECT ... (normal request)

VALUES is replaced by an SQL request. The result of this request is inserted into specified table. If the request returns a complete tuple in the correct order the attribute list does not need to be stated here either.