Question

Can you please help:

I have an arrival date column that needs 5000 rows adding to it with random dates from the year 2010.

For example: 01/01/2010, 25/8/2010, 03/05/2010, 31/12/2010, etc

I think it would be an INSERT statement but I am unsure.

Thanks

Wayne

USE Occupancy
CREATE TABLE Book
(BookNumber varchar(30),
ArrivalDate int)

DECLARE @BookNumber varchar(30)
DECLARE @ArrivalDate int

SET @BookNumber = 1
SET @ArrivalDate = 0

WHILE @BookNumber <= 5000
WHILE @ArrivalDate <= 5000

BEGIN
INSERT INTO Book (BookNumber,ArrivalDate)
SELECT 'B' + Right ('00000000' + CAST(@BookNumber AS varchar(30)),8),
DATEADD(day, CAST(RAND() * 365 as int), '2010-1-1')

SET @BookNumber = @BookNumber + 1
SET @ArrivalDate = @ArrivalDate + 1
END

Answer 1

DECLARE @counter int
SET @counter = 0
WHILE @counter < 5000
BEGIN
    INSERT INTO myTable (arrivalDate)
    SELECT DATEADD(day, CAST(RAND() * 365 as int), '2010-1-1')
    SET @counter = @counter + 1
END

And if you have a numbers table or generator, you can avoid the loop:

INSERT INTO myTable (arrivalDate)
SELECT DATEADD(day, ABS(CHECKSUM(NEWID()) % 365), '2010-1-1')
FROM ( GenerateRowNumbers(5000, 1) ) t