Insert multiple rows WITHOUT repeating the “INSERT INTO …” part of the statement?

Question

I know I\'ve done this before years ago, but I can\'t remember the syntax, and I can\'t find it anywhere due to pulling up tons of help docs and articles about \"bulk import

Answer 1

Others here have suggested a couple multi-record syntaxes. Expounding upon that, I suggest you insert into a temp table first, and insert your main table from there.

The reason for this is loading the data from a query can take longer, and you may end up locking the table or pages longer than is necessary, which slows down other queries running against that table.

-- Make a temp table with the needed columns
select top 0 *
into #temp
from MyTable (nolock)

-- load data into it at your leisure (nobody else is waiting for this table or these pages)
insert #temp (ID, Name)
values (123, 'Timmy'),
(124, 'Jonny'),
(125, 'Sally')

-- Now that all the data is in SQL, copy it over to the real table. This runs much faster in most cases.
insert MyTable (ID, Name)
select ID, Name
from #temp

-- cleanup
drop table #temp

Also, your IDs should probably be identity(1,1) and you probably shouldn't be inserting them, in the vast majority of circumstances. Let SQL decide that stuff for you.