The INSERT statement

Before you can use and manipulate data, you actually need data inside your database. The syntax for this command is very straight forward and very easy to follow.

Starting with:

This tells the server that we are going to input data into the database. But first, we need to tell the server which database we're going to insert the data into which brings us to the next part of the syntax.

'database' in the above example should be replaced with the name of your database and needs to exist for the SQL to begin inserting the data.

The next part of the syntax is where you define your columns. They must be in the order in which you want to insert data (which will come shortly).

It does not matter what order you list the columns in, just as long as the values correspond to the column names in order of sequence.

The final part of the syntax is the actual set of values which you want to insert into the database. It is important that you include the keyword 'VALUE' between the column names and the values.