SQL Select Into

The SQL SELECT INTO is an alternative syntax which can be used to perform the same actions as an INSERT INTO statement combined with a SELECT statement. Not all SQL dialects support this syntax.

This combination statement takes the general form:

SELECT <columns> INTO <destination table> FROM <source table>;

As this is using a SELECT statement, all the usual SQL constructs (expressions, WHERE clauses, etc.) can be applied to filter and manipulate the data as desired and write out the result into the destination table.

In the previous section, we saw we could dump all the records from the employees table into a new table using the INSERT INTO SELECT syntax as below:

INSERT INTO employees_backup SELECT * FROM employees;

To use the SQL SELECT INTO syntax instead, this would take the form as below:

SELECT * INTO employees_backup FROM employees;

As with other data manipulation statements, no records are returned as a result of the query, only confirmation of execution success or failure and the number of records affected.