T-SQL Insert into table without having to specify every column

Question

In our db there is a table that has a little over 80 columns. It has a primary key and Identity insert is turned on. I\'m looking for a way to insert into this table every colum

Answer 1

In answer to a related question (SELECT * EXCEPT), I point out the truly relational language Tutorial D allows projection to be expressed in terms of the attributes to be removed instead of the ones to be kept e.g.

my_relvar { ALL BUT description }

However its INSERT syntax requires tuple value constructors to include attribute name / value pairs e.g.

INSERT P
   RELATION 
   {
      TUPLE { PNO PNO ( 'P1' ) , PNAME CHARACTER ( 'Nut' ) }, 
      TUPLE { PNO PNO ( 'P2' ) , PNAME CHARACTER ( 'Bolt' ) }
   };

Of course, using this syntax there is no column ordering (because it is truly relational!) e.g. this is semantically equivalent:

INSERT P
   RELATION 
   {
      TUPLE { PNO PNO ( 'P1' ) , PNAME CHARACTER ( 'Nut' ) }, 
      TUPLE { PNAME CHARACTER ( 'Bolt' ) , PNO PNO ( 'P2' ) }
   };

The alternative would be to rely fully on attribute ordering, which SQL does partially e.g. this is a close SQL equivalent to the the above:

INSERT INTO P ( PNO , PNAME ) 
   VALUES        
      ( PNO ( 'P1' ) , CAST ( 'Nut'  AS VARCHAR ( 20 ) ) ) , 
      ( PNO ( 'P2' ) , CAST ( 'Bolt' AS VARCHAR ( 20 ) ) );

Once the commalist of columns has been specified the VALUES row constructors have the maintain this order, which is not ideal. But at least the order is specified: your proposal would rely on some default order which may be possibly non-deterministic.