Question

My table has a large number of columns. I have a command to copy some data – think of it as cloning a product – but as the columns may change in the future, I would like to only select everything from the table and only change the value of one column without having to refer to the rest.

Eg instead of:

INSERT INTO MYTABLE ( SELECT NEW_ID, COLUMN_1, COLUMN_2, COLUMN_3, etc FROM MYTABLE) 

I would like something resembling

INSERT INTO MYTABLE ( SELECT * {update this, set ID = NEW_ID} FROM MYTABLE) 

Is there a simple way to do this?

This is a DB2 database on an iSeries, but answers for any platform are welcome.

Answer 1

You could do this:

create table mytable_copy as select * from mytable; update mytable_copy set id=new_id; insert into mytable select * from mytable_copy; drop table mytable_copy;