What means DEFAULT VALUES specification in an insert query?

Question

I am pretty new in Microsoft SQL Server and I am not so into DB in general.

I have the following doubt about an insert query that begin in this way:

insert into MyTable DEFAULT VALUES

What exactly mean the DEFAULT VALUES specification?

Tnx

Andrea

Answer 1

You can watch default specifications in work by checking that code:

DECLARE @tmp as table 
(
id int null,
num int null default(777),
txt varchar(10) null default('abc'),
date datetime null
)    
insert into @tmp DEFAULT VALUES    
select * from @tmp

---

Output is

id      num     txt     date
NULL    777     abc     NULL

Answer 2

Reading the fine manual yields:

DEFAULT VALUES

Forces the new row to contain the default values defined for each column.

Answer 3

Well it uses the default values specified in your table.

So for example if you have a column CreationDate datetime default(getdate()) it will use it.

Answer 4

If each of the required columns in MyTable has specified DEFAULT VALUE then this statement insert such a row.

For example you could have column Date with default 01/01/2014 and position with DEFAULT 'Developer' and this statement would insert such a record.

You can read more here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa933206%28SQL.80%29.aspx