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<title>2.4.Populating a Table With Rows</title>
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<div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both">
<a name="tutorial-populate"></a>2.4.Populating a Table With Rows</h2></div></div></div>
<a name="id568226"></a><p> The <code class="command">INSERT</code> statement is used to populate a table with
rows:
</p>
<pre class="programlisting">INSERT INTO weather VALUES ('San Francisco', 46, 50, 0.25, '1994-11-27');</pre>
<p>
Note that all data types use rather obvious input formats.
Constants that are not simple numeric values usually must be
surrounded by single quotes (<code class="literal">'</code>), as in the example.
The
<code class="type">date</code> type is actually quite flexible in what it
accepts, but for this tutorial we will stick to the unambiguous
format shown here.
</p>
<p> The <code class="type">point</code> type requires a coordinate pair as input,
as shown here:
</p>
<pre class="programlisting">INSERT INTO cities VALUES ('San Francisco', '(-194.0, 53.0)');</pre>
<p>
</p>
<p> The syntax used so far requires you to remember the order of the
columns. An alternative syntax allows you to list the columns
explicitly:
</p>
<pre class="programlisting">INSERT INTO weather (city, temp_lo, temp_hi, prcp, date)
VALUES ('San Francisco', 43, 57, 0.0, '1994-11-29');</pre>
<p>
You can list the columns in a different order if you wish or
even omit some columns, e.g., if the precipitation is unknown:
</p>
<pre class="programlisting">INSERT INTO weather (date, city, temp_hi, temp_lo)
VALUES ('1994-11-29', 'Hayward', 54, 37);</pre>
<p>
Many developers consider explicitly listing the columns better
style than relying on the order implicitly.
</p>
<p> Please enter all the commands shown above so you have some data to
work with in the following sections.
</p>
<p> <a name="id568319"></a>
You could also have used <code class="command">COPY</code> to load large
amounts of data from flat-text files. This is usually faster
because the <code class="command">COPY</code> command is optimized for this
application while allowing less flexibility than
<code class="command">INSERT</code>. An example would be:
</p>
<pre class="programlisting">COPY weather FROM '/home/user/weather.txt';</pre>
<p>
where the file name for the source file must be available to the
backend server machine, not the client, since the backend server
reads the file directly. You can read more about the
<code class="command">COPY</code> command in <a href="sql-copy.html">COPY</a>.
</p>
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