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Copying from One Table to Another

There is another form of data insertion that does not use the INSERT statement at all. To copy the contents of a table into a brand new table (one that is created on-the-fly) you can use the SELECT INTO statement.

Unlike INSERT SELECT, which appends data to an existing table, SELECT INTO copies data into a new table (and depending on the DBMS being used, can overwrite the table if it already exists).

The following example demonstrates the use of SELECT INTO:

SELECT *
INTO CustCopy
FROM Customers;

This SELECT statement creates a new table named CustCopy and copies the entire contents of the Customers table into it. Because SELECT * was used, every column in the Customers table will be created (and populated) ...