Question

I am trying to come up with an insert sql stament that will insert data from a table into another existing table. There are in fact some ways of doing this but I did not find a way that matches my requirements.

I need an insert statement type query that will insert data into another table but it does not knows which headers both table have. For instance the origin table has 25 headers and the target one has 20, which 10 of them match in name. I would like to transfer the ones that are matching the name of the headers ignoring the rest.

Hope I was clear and hope anyone will be able to help me

Answer 1

I think you have to get the two tables columns then filter em to get match columns names after that you can build your insert into statement and exec it

to get columns exists in both table

Declare @cols varchar(max)

SELECT  @cols =COALESCE(@cols +',','')+'['+COLUMN_NAME+']'
FROM DbName.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS 
WHERE TABLE_NAME = N'security' and COLUMN_NAME in( 
      SELECT COLUMN_NAME
      FROM DbName.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS 
      WHERE TABLE_NAME = N'debt_securities')

then create insert statement

declare @query varchar(max)='insert into debt_securities('+@cols+')
                             select '+@cols+' from [security]'

then execute it

exec(@query)