Insert into … values ( SELECT … FROM … )

Question

I am trying to INSERT INTO a table using the input from another table. Although this is entirely feasible for many database engines, I always seem to struggle t

Answer 1

If you go the INSERT VALUES route to insert multiple rows, make sure to delimit the VALUES into sets using parentheses, so:

INSERT INTO `receiving_table`
  (id,
  first_name,
  last_name)
VALUES 
  (1002,'Charles','Babbage'),
  (1003,'George', 'Boole'),
  (1001,'Donald','Chamberlin'),
  (1004,'Alan','Turing'),
  (1005,'My','Widenius');

Otherwise MySQL objects that "Column count doesn't match value count at row 1", and you end up writing a trivial post when you finally figure out what to do about it.