Question

I am attempting to insert a copy of a row from one table into another table with the same schema, with the addition of one column (a timestamp) to provide a ‘history’ of the first table in MS Sql Server 2005.

So, my query, without the additional column would be:

'SELECT INTO [WebsiteHistory] FROM [Website]' 

I want to populate the timestamp column as well, but am not sure how to best do this. I’d like to do something like:

'SELECT Website.*, '' + DateTime.Now.ToShortDateString() + '' INTO [WebsiteHistory] FROM [Website]' 

But that shouldn’t work, especially if the timestamp column is not the last one. Is there any way to do this?

Answer 1

Be warned. This works, but it is neither nice nor recommendable:

INSERT   WebsiteHistory SELECT   *,   GETDATE() FROM   Website WHERE   Id = @WebsiteId 

This assumes WebsiteHistory has the same structure as Website (you said it has), plus there is one additional DATETIME field.

Better is this, because it is much more fail-safe (at the expense of being more verbose):

INSERT   WebsiteHistory   (   Id,   Field1,   Field2,   Field3,   Field4,   ModifiedDate   ) SELECT   Id,   Field1,   Field2,   Field3,   Field4,   GETDATE() FROM   Website WHERE   Id = @WebsiteId