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SQL IDENTITY INSERT

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In this article we will show you, How to insert values into Identity Column using SQL IDENTITY INSERT with example. For this, We are going to use the below shown Customer table inside the [SQL Tutorial] Database.

From the below code snippet you can observe that, [Customer Key] column is an Identity column and our job is to insert values into this [Customer Key] column

USE [SQL Tutorial]
GO

CREATE TABLE [Customer]
(
  [CustomerKey] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
  [FirstName] [varchar](50) NULL,
  [LastName] [varchar](50) NULL,
  [BirthDate] [date] NULL,
  [EmailAddress] [nvarchar](50) NULL,
  [Yearly Income] [money] NULL,
  [Profession] [nvarchar](100) NULL
)

Insert values into Identity Column using SQL IDENTITY INSERT

Before we start using the SQL IDENTITY INSERT Command, Let us see what will happen when we insert values into Identity Column (Customer Key) using the following statement

-- SQL Server Identity Insert
INSERT INTO [Customer] 
  ([CustomerKey], [FirstName],[LastName],[BirthDate],
   [EmailAddress],[Yearly Income],[Profession])
VALUES (1, 'John', 'Miller', '2006-01-28', 
        '[email protected]', 20000, 'Developer')

OUTPUT
SQL IDENTITY INSERT 1

From the above screenshot you can observe that it is throwing an error saying: Cannot insert explicit value for identity column in table ‘Customer’ when IDENTITY_INSERT is set OFF. This is because, any Column using an IDENTITY property will start based on the starting position and automatically increments based on increment value for each row inserted into the table.

Let us see, What will happen when we insert remaining values apart from identity column (customer key)

-- Sql Server Identity Insert Example
INSERT INTO [Customer] 
  ([FirstName],[LastName],[BirthDate],
   [EmailAddress],[Yearly Income],[Profession])
VALUES ('John', 'Miller', '2006-01-28', 
        '[email protected]', 20000, 'Developer')

OUTPUT
SQL IDENTITY INSERT 2

From the above screenshot you can observe that 1 row is effected. Now, Let us see, whether the above statement is inserted the values into the Customer table or not by using following SQL Query

SELECT * FROM [Customer]

OUTPUT
SQL IDENTITY INSERT 3

From the above you can observe that, Customer Key value 1 is automatically inserted because of the IDENTITY.

SET IDENTITY_INSERT ON / OFF

In this example, We will use the SET IDENTITY_INSERT property to set the IDENTITY of a column to ON and OFF

-- Sql Server Identity Insert Example
SET IDENTITY_INSERT [Customer] ON  

INSERT INTO [Customer] 
  ([CustomerKey], [FirstName],[LastName],[BirthDate],
   [EmailAddress],[Yearly Income],[Profession])
VALUES (100, 'Tutorial', 'Gateway', '2015-08-31', 
         '[email protected]', 50000, 'Founder')

SET IDENTITY_INSERT [Customer] OFF

OUTPUT
SQL IDENTITY INSERT 4

ANALYSIS
Following statement will set the Identity_Insert ON on Customers table.

SET IDENTITY_INSERT [Customer] ON

Below statement will insert the explicit values into Customer table. This include IDENTITY Column [Customer Key]

INSERT INTO [Customer] 
  ([CustomerKey], [FirstName],[LastName],[BirthDate],
   [EmailAddress],[Yearly Income],[Profession])
VALUES (100, 'Tutorial', 'Gateway', '2015-08-31', 
         '[email protected]', 50000, 'Founder')

Following statement will set the Identity_Insert OFF on Customers table. Remember, after this statement, you can’t insert values into Identity column (Here, [Customer Key])

SET IDENTITY_INSERT [Customer] OFF

Use below query to check whether the above statement is inserted the values into the Identity Column or not

SELECT * FROM [Customer]

OUTPUT
SQL IDENTITY INSERT 5

From the above screenshot you can observe that, We successfully inserted the values into the identity column

NOTE: A session allows only one table to set it’s IDENTITY_INSERT property ON. If you try to issues SET IDENTITY_INSERT ON statement on multiple tables, SQL returns error message

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