Sql – Is it possible to use the SELECT INTO clause with UNION [ALL]

sqlsql server

In SQL Server this inserts 100 records, from the Customers table into tmpFerdeen :-

SELECT top(100)*
INTO tmpFerdeen
FROM Customers

Is it possible to do a SELECT INTO across a UNION ALL SELECT :-

SELECT top(100)* 
FROM Customers
UNION All
SELECT top(100)* 
FROM CustomerEurope
UNION All
SELECT top(100)* 
FROM CustomerAsia
UNION All
SELECT top(100)* 
FROM CustomerAmericas

Not too sure where to add the INTO clause.

Best Answer

This works in SQL Server:

SELECT * INTO tmpFerdeen FROM (
  SELECT top 100 * 
  FROM Customers
  UNION All
  SELECT top 100 * 
  FROM CustomerEurope
  UNION All
  SELECT top 100 * 
  FROM CustomerAsia
  UNION All
  SELECT top 100 * 
  FROM CustomerAmericas
) as tmp

Related Solutions

Sql – Insert into … values ( SELECT … FROM … )

Try:

INSERT INTO table1 ( column1 )
SELECT  col1
FROM    table2

This is standard ANSI SQL and should work on any DBMS

It definitely works for:

Oracle
MS SQL Server
MySQL
Postgres
SQLite v3
Teradata
DB2
Sybase
Vertica
HSQLDB
H2
AWS RedShift
SAP HANA
Google Spanner

Sql – the difference between UNION and UNION ALL

UNION removes duplicate records (where all columns in the results are the same), UNION ALL does not.

There is a performance hit when using UNION instead of UNION ALL, since the database server must do additional work to remove the duplicate rows, but usually you do not want the duplicates (especially when developing reports).

To identify duplicates, records must be comparable types as well as compatible types. This will depend on the SQL system. For example the system may truncate all long text fields to make short text fields for comparison (MS Jet), or may refuse to compare binary fields (ORACLE)

UNION Example:

SELECT 'foo' AS bar UNION SELECT 'foo' AS bar

Result:

+-----+
| bar |
+-----+
| foo |
+-----+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

UNION ALL example:

SELECT 'foo' AS bar UNION ALL SELECT 'foo' AS bar