Accessing Databases with JDBC - Java: How to Program Early Objects - page 1058

FirstName LastName ISBN FirstName LastName ISBN

Harvey Deitel 0133807800 Paul Deitel 0133406954

Harvey Deitel 0132151006 Paul Deitel 0132990601

Paul Deitel 0132121360 Paul Deitel 013299044X

Paul Deitel 0133570924 Paul Deitel 0132575655

Paul Deitel 0133764036 Paul Deitel 0133807800

Paul Deitel 0133378713 Paul Deitel 0132151006

Paul Deitel 0136151574 Michael Morgano 0132121360

Paul Deitel 0133379337 Dan Quirk 0136151574

Fig. 24.19 | Sampling of authors and ISBNs for the topics they have written in ascending
order by LastName and FirstName . (Part 2 of 2.)

24.4.5 INSERT Statement
The INSERT statement inserts a row into a table. The basic form of this statement is

INSERT INTO tableName ( columnName1 , columnName2 , … , columnNameN )
VALUES ( value1 , value2 , … , valueN )

where tableName is the table in which to insert the row. The tableName is followed by a
comma-separated list of column names in parentheses (this list is not required if the IN-
SERT operation specifies a value for every column of the table in the correct order). The list
of column names is followed by the SQL keyword VALUES and a comma-separated list of
values in parentheses. The values specified here must match the columns specified after the
table name in both order and type (e.g., if columnName1 is supposed to be the FirstName
column, then value1 should be a string in single quotes representing the first name). Al-
ways explicitly list the columns when inserting rows. If the table's column order changes
or a new column is added, using only VALUES may cause an error. The INSERT statement

INSERT INTO Authors (FirstName, LastName)
VALUES ( 'Sue' , 'Red' )

inserts a row into the Authors table. The statement indicates that values are provided for
the FirstName and LastName columns. The corresponding values are 'Sue' and 'Smith' .
We do not specify an AuthorID in this example because AuthorID is an autoincremented
column in the Authors table. For every row added to this table, the DBMS assigns a
unique AuthorID value that is the next value in the autoincremented sequence (i.e., 1, 2,
3 and so on). In this case, Sue Red would be assigned AuthorID number 6. Figure 24.20
shows the Authors table after the INSERT operation. [ Note: Not every database manage-
ment system supports autoincremented columns. Check the documentation for your
DBMS for alternatives to autoincremented columns.]

Common Programming Error 24.3
SQL delimits strings with single quotes ( ' ). A string containing a single quote (e.g.,
O'Malley) must have two single quotes in the position where the single quote appears (e.g.,
'O''Malley' ). The first acts as an escape character for the second. Not escaping single-
quote characters in a string that's part of a SQL statement is a SQL syntax error.