SQL SERVER – Use INSERT INTO … SELECT instead of Cursor

This blog post is written in response to the post showing some of the worst practices of past. Well, just like last month’s theme, everybody learns by doing it one step at a time. In my case, I started my career as a network engineer and had no database knowledge during that time. I can still remember my old code which became quite a laughingstock when it was sent for a code review. This story is indeed interesting, so instead of writing shortly, I am going to write today in detail.

It happened about 8 years ago when I was working as Network Engineer in United States. I was responsible for a large data center and we had more than 40 servers under my watch. In our SQL Server database we had one table for the inventory of all the servers. On that table we used to keep a lot of details of the server. To keep it simple, I will say that we have only two columns in that table: ServerID and ServerName. I was asked to write a script which was intended to retrieve all the data from this table and insert them into the new table that was created by the database administrator. I thought I could handle SQL Server script well enough because I learned SQL a bit when I was younger. I ended up writing a script where I wrote cursor to SELECT single row from the table and insert into new table. Well, this went very fine. The script was taking a while to perform its tasks; nevertheless, it worked. I used this script for a short while.

Here is the script that I wrote. I am using sample and simple database for example. Please note that this is not a good practice.

-- Create Table and Populate with Sample Data
CREATE TABLE ServerTable (ServerID INT, ServerName VARCHAR(100))
INSERT INTO ServerTable (ServerID, ServerName)
SELECT 1, 'First Server'
UNION ALL
SELECT 2, 'Second Server'
UNION ALL
SELECT 3, 'Third Server'
-- Creating New Table
CREATE TABLE NewServerTable (ServerID INT, ServerName VARCHAR(100))
-- Insert Logic
DECLARE @Flag INT
SELECT @Flag = COUNT(*) FROM ServerTable
WHILE(@Flag > 0)
BEGIN
INSERT INTO NewServerTable (ServerID, ServerName)
SELECT ServerID, ServerName
FROM ServerTable
WHERE ServerID = @Flag
SET @Flag = @Flag - 1
END
SELECT ServerID, ServerName
FROM NewServerTable
-- Clean up
DROP TABLE ServerTable
DROP TABLE NewServerTable


This script worked very well till we had changed in company policy. We then had a newly- appointed CTO (which I was about to become 3 years after this incidence), who introduced the requirement of Code Reviewing of all both old codes and new ongoing codes. When my code went to a code review, my Team Leader really laughed at my code. So he sent me new piece of the code which was much shorter and more efficient. The code which he proposed was as follows. I honestly say this was much better than my code.

-- Create Table and Populate with Sample Data
CREATE TABLE ServerTable (ServerID INT, ServerName VARCHAR(100))
INSERT INTO ServerTable (ServerID, ServerName)
SELECT 1, 'First Server'
UNION ALL
SELECT 2, 'Second Server'
UNION ALL
SELECT 3, 'Third Server'
-- Creating New Table
CREATE TABLE NewServerTable (ServerID INT, ServerName VARCHAR(100))
-- Insert Logic
INSERT INTO NewServerTable (ServerID, ServerName)
SELECT ServerID, ServerName
FROM ServerTable
SELECT ServerID, ServerName
FROM NewServerTable
-- Clean up
DROP TABLE ServerTable
DROP TABLE NewServerTable

If you’ve noticed, the new insert code is just reduced to two lines only. Today you might think it is a very simple code, but for me it was a very new thing during those times. Now comes the best part of this whole story.

My team leader, who was very supportive and extremely positive person, asked me to demonstrate this whole incidence on our next team meeting. Honestly, I did not feel bad about accepting my mistake and learning new things. During the team meeting, I first accepted the fact that I was wrong with my code and thanked the Team Leader for giving me the opportunity to improve and develop myself. Because of his encouragement to accept my own mistake and improve from that incident, today I have reached this place.

Please get rid of cursors and use INSERT INTO…SELECT or SELECT INTO logic.

Reference:  Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)