Question

I have a temp table with the exact structure of a concrete table T. It was created like this:

select top 0 * into #tmp from T 

After processing and filling in content into #tmp, I want to copy the content back to T like this:

insert into T select * from #tmp 

This is okay as long as T doesn’t have identity column, but in my case it does. Is there any way I can ignore the auto-increment identity column from #tmp when I copy to T? My motivation is to avoid having to spell out every column name in the Insert Into list.

EDIT: toggling identity_insert wouldn’t work because the pkeys in #tmp may collide with those in T if rows were inserted into T outside of my script, that’s if #tmp has auto-incremented the pkey to sync with T’s in the first place.

Answer 1

As identity will be generated during insert anyway, could you simply remove this column from #tmp before inserting the data back to T?

alter table #tmp drop column id 

UPD: Here’s an example I’ve tested in SQL Server 2008:

create table T(ID int identity(1,1) not null, Value nvarchar(50)) insert into T (Value) values (N'Hello T!') select top 0 * into #tmp from T alter table #tmp drop column ID insert into #tmp (Value) values (N'Hello #tmp') insert into T select * from #tmp drop table #tmp select * from T drop table T