Question

how can I assign a column name to the SUM column ?

i.e.

select OwnerUserId, SUM(PostScore)
INTO Experts
from ...

I get this error:

An object or column name is missing or
empty. For SELECT INTO statements,
verify each column has a name. For
other statements, look for empty alias
names. Aliases defined as “” or [] are
not allowed. Change the alias to a
valid name.

I guess because the column containing the results of SUM has not name.

Answer 1

First of all there’s no SQL-Server 2003. Only 2000, 2005, 2008 (and then 2008R2, 2012 and the latest 2014).

As for the name – called alias – you can use AS. This is the standard SQL syntax:

SELECT OwnerUserId, SUM(PostScore) AS PostScoreSum
INTO Experts 
FROM ... 

But AS is optional, so you can also alias a column without it:

SELECT OwnerUserId, SUM(PostScore)  PostScoreSum
INTO Experts 
FROM ... 

You can also use the (proprietary, only in SQL-Server) alias = column syntax:

SELECT OwnerUserId, PostScoreSum = SUM(PostScore)  
INTO Experts 
FROM ...