Re: COPY from temp table to main table insted of INSERT INTO

I have already copied the source data over from R in an unnormalized form and then am normalizing it in SQL (via a series of queries).

Thanks,
Stephen

From: David G. Johnston [mailto:david(dot)g(dot)johnston(at)gmail(dot)com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2017 11:00 AM
To: Stephen Froehlich <s(dot)froehlich(at)cablelabs(dot)com>
Cc: pgsql-novice(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [NOVICE] COPY from temp table to main table insted of INSERT INTO

On Tue, Jul 11, 2017 at 9:45 AM, Stephen Froehlich <s(dot)froehlich(at)cablelabs(dot)com<mailto:s(dot)froehlich(at)cablelabs(dot)com>> wrote:
I tend to do mass inserts to my database, but INSERT INTO is taking quite a while for 100k values.

What is the syntax for using the COPY command to copy a well formatted temp table to the “end” of the primary table? I am having trouble understanding https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.5/static/sql-copy.html.

​Tables don't have beginnings or ends.

Are you intending to use client software to access the source data or are you planning on putting the source data in a location where the server o/s user can see it?​

If you already have an actual temporary table inside the database you wouldn't use COPY. COPY is intended to transfer data from/to an external file (including stdin/stdout).

Generally:

(in psql)
BEGIN;
CREATE TEMP TABLE tmptbl ( cols );
\copy tmptbl from '/tmp/file-to-load.csv' with ( ... )
INSERT INTO tbl SELECT * FROM tmptbl;
COMMIT;

\copy in psql constructs an appropriate "COPY" SQL command, executes it on the server, and then funnels the contents of "file" to the server.

David J.