Best way to do multi-row insert in Oracle?

Question

I\'m looking for a good way to perform multi-row inserts into an Oracle 9 database. The following works in MySQL but doesn\'t seem to be supported in Oracle.

Answer 1

This works in Oracle:

insert into pager (PAG_ID,PAG_PARENT,PAG_NAME,PAG_ACTIVE)
          select 8000,0,'Multi 8000',1 from dual
union all select 8001,0,'Multi 8001',1 from dual

The thing to remember here is to use the from dual statement.

(source)

Answer 2

If you have the values that you want to insert in another table already, then you can Insert from a select statement.

INSERT INTO a_table (column_a, column_b) SELECT column_a, column_b FROM b_table;

Otherwise, you can list a bunch of single row insert statements and submit several queries in bulk to save the time for something that works in both Oracle and MySQL.

@Espo's solution is also a good one that will work in both Oracle and MySQL if your data isn't already in a table.

Answer 3

you can insert using loop if you want to insert some random values.

BEGIN 
    FOR x IN 1 .. 1000 LOOP
         INSERT INTO MULTI_INSERT_DEMO (ID, NAME)
         SELECT x, 'anyName' FROM dual;
    END LOOP;
END;