How do I create a table based on another table

sql-server sql-server-2008 create-table
oliverdejohnson picture oliverdejohnson · Aug 15, 2013 · Viewed 204.1k times · Source

I want to create a table based on the definition of another table.

I'm coming from oracle and I'd normally do this:

 CREATE TABLE schema.newtable AS SELECT * FROM schema.oldtable;

I can't seem to be able to do this in SQL Server 2008.

Answer

Aaron Bertrand picture Aaron Bertrand · Aug 15, 2013

There is no such syntax in SQL Server, though CREATE TABLE AS ... SELECT does exist in PDW. In SQL Server you can use this query to create an empty table:

SELECT * INTO schema.newtable FROM schema.oldtable WHERE 1 = 0;

(If you want to make a copy of the table including all of the data, then leave out the WHERE clause.)

Note that this creates the same column structure (including an IDENTITY column if one exists) but it does not copy any indexes, constraints, triggers, etc.

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