Question

I have came up with this query, does not produce any error while praise, but I Don’t know if I can use this select statement as the value

insert into store(c1 ,artno, c3, c4, c5, c6, c7 )
           select '1', a.artno, 0,0.0,null,null,null 
           from art a
              left join store s on s.artno=a.artno
              inner join status b on a.artno = b.artno
    where b.state ='5'  
      and s.artno is null  
      and a.artgroup not in('63','280') 

I also saw another alternative which may be used but not sure if it can be used to insert as my requirement, I saw this implemented in stored procedure so just grabbed the idea if it can be used?

declare @artno as varchar(150); 
declare @count as tinyint

Declare cS CURSOR For
               select  a.artno
               from art a
              left join store s on s.artno=a.artno
              inner join status b on a.artno = b.artno
    where b.staus ='5'  
      and s.artno is null  
      and a.artgroup not in('63','280') 


Open cS
Fetch NEXT from cS into @artno

While @@FETCH_STATUS=0

select @count=COUNT(*) from store where artno=@artno
if @count=0 

 BEGIN

insert into store(c1 ,artno, c3, c4, c5, c6, c7 )
           values('1', a.artno, 0,0.0,null,null,null)                 

    fetch next from cS into @artno                 
 END 
 close cS
 deallocate cS

Some explanation which to use and which not to and why, would help me for my knowledge as well.

Answer 1

Cursors are memory intensive and time consuming. Whereas SELECT INTO would have pre-constructed the table content to be inserted and can do it in a single stretch. Also in case of SELECT INTO, SQL Engine has chance of optimizing the data fetch whereas in case of cursor, you are forcing the DB to fetch rows sequentially and no optimization is possible.

http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2011/08/10/sql-server-use-insert-into-select-instead-of-cursor/

Go through the above link which advocates my statement.