Specifying Columns

If you do not explicitly specify one or more columns, data is inserted into columns using the column order that was established when the table was created or last altered. The column order is listed in the syscolumns system catalog table.

In , you can use the DESCRIBE statement with an INSERT statement to identify the column order and the data type of the columns in a table.

The number of columns specified in the INSERT INTO clause must equal the number of values supplied in the VALUES clause or by the SELECT statement, either implicitly or explicitly. If you specify a column list, the columns receive data in the order in which you list the columns. The first value following the VALUES keyword is inserted into the first column listed, the second value is inserted into the second column listed, and so on.

If you omit a column from the column list, and the column does not have a default value associated with it, the database server places a NULL value in the column when the INSERT statement is executed.