Question

my goal is to select items from a table and append those items into another table located on a remote database on the same server. All columns in both tables match up and are identical. In this case,

I have the tsql:

INSERT INTO db1.dbo.tblitems 
     SELECT * 
       FROM db2.dbo.tblitems i2 
      WHERE i2 = 'import'

i get an error saying:
An explicit value for the identity column in table ‘db1.dbo.tblitems’ can only be specified when a column list is used and IDENTITY_INSERT is ON.

any ideas why this doesn’t work?
thanks in advance

Answer 1

Sounds like there is an identity column in the table. An identity column is a column that is made up of values generated by the database. For example:

create table #TestTable (id int identity, name varchar(50))
insert into #TestTable select 1, 'Will Smith'

This gives the identity column error. You can avoid that in two ways: the first is not to insert the identity column, like:

insert into #TestTable (name) select 'Will Smith'

The second is to use set identity_insert (requires admin privileges):

set identity_insert #TestTable on
insert into #TestTable (id, name) select 1, 'Will Smith'
set identity_insert #TestTable off

In both cases, you have to specify the column list.