PostgreSQL Tutorial – Inserting Data

In the last two articles, we talked about creating your first PostgreSQL database, the syntax of createdb and psql, and creating tables in the database. Next up, we’re going to look at filling those tables with data.

createdb -U jeremiah pagila
psql -U jeremiah -f pagila-schema.sql pagila
psql -U jeremiah -f pagila-insert-data.sql pagila

Loading Data From A File
We’re going to be looking at the pagila-insert-data.sql file. There is a separate file, pagila-data.sql, but we will not be using it. Both files accomplish the same purpose, but pagila-insert-data.sql uses standard SQL syntax whereas pagila-data.sql uses the COPY command do the bulk of the work. Since our goal is to familiarize ourselves with basic SQL, we’re going to use pagila-insert-data.sql.

Preparation is Key
The first thing you will notice is that there are close to 100 lines of options and comments (comments are start with -- and end at the end of the current line) before we get to the actual meat of the file. This is because we need to set up common settings before we start working. Let’s take a look at these options line by line.

SET client_encoding = 'UTF8';

Read more: Jeremiah Peschka

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