SQL Interview: 4: INSERT statements and column lists

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Development Level: Medium

Question:

When you are writing an INSERT statement in T-SQL, the column list is usually optional.

Why would including it be a good idea? When would it ever be required (i.e. not optional)?

Answer:

If you don’t include a column list, SQL Server will try to match up the values you are inserting, with the list of columns in the table. It will do that in column_id order (based on what you see in sys.columns) and it will ignore any columns that are auto-generated like IDENTITY columns, computed columns, and rowversion columns.

Sometimes you aren’t wanting  to insert all the other columns. Using a column list allows you to specify just the columns that you are inserting.

This is also a good idea as it produces less fragile code. If the table gets redefined with a different order for the columns, your INSERT statement would still work if you have listed the columns you are inserting, in the order that you are providing them.

Column lists are usually optional but recommended, but they are required when you are inserting into a table with SET IDENTITY_INSERT set to ON.

2021-03-30