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 the [Customer Key] column is an Identity column. And our SQL Server job is to insert values into this identity column [Customer Key]
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
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. It 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 the identity column (customer key) in SQL Server.
-- 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
From the above screenshot, you can observe that 1 row affected. Now, let us see, whether the above statement is inserted the values into the Customer table or not by using the following SQL Query
SELECT * FROM [Customer]
OUTPUT
From the above, you can observe that Customer Key value 1 automatically inserted because of the IDENTITY.
SQL 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
ANALYSIS
The following statement will set the SQL Identity Insert ON on the Customers table.
SET IDENTITY_INSERT [Customer] ON
The below statement will insert the explicit values into the Customer table. It includes 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')
The following statement will set the Identity_Insert OFF on the Customers table. Remember, after this statement; you can’t insert values into Identity column (Here, [Customer Key])
SET IDENTITY_INSERT [Customer] OFF
Use the below SQL query to check whether the above statement is inserted the values into the Identity Column or not
SELECT * FROM [Customer]
OUTPUT
From the above screenshot, you can see that we successfully inserted the values into the identity column in SQL ServerSQ
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 an error message