Inserting Data into a Table (Perl for System Administration)

D.2. Inserting Data into a Table

Now that we have an empty table, let's look at two ways to add new data. Here's the first form:

USE sysadm
INSERT hosts 
   VALUES (
     'shimmer',
     '192.168.1.11',
     'shim shimmy shimmydoodles',
     'David Davis',
     'Software',
     'Main',
     '309',
     'Sun',
     'Ultra60'
   )

The first line tells the server we are going to work with objects in the sysadm database. The second line selects the hosts table and adds a row, one column at a time. This version of the INSERT command is used to add a complete row to the table (i.e., one with all columns filled in). To create a new row with a partial record we can specify the columns to fill, like so:

USE sysadm
INSERT hosts (name,ipaddr,owner)
   VALUES (
     'bendir',
     '192.168.1.3',
     'Cindy Coltrane'
    )

The INSERT command will fail if we try to insert a row does not have all of the required (NOT NULL) columns.

INSERT can also be used to add data from one table to another; we'll see this usage later. For the rest of our examples, assume that we've fully populated the hosts table using the first form of INSERT.