"INSERT INTO" Statements with INDENTITY Columns

This section describes what will happen if you try to insert rows with values for INDENTITY columns.

An INDENTITY column is a special column in a table that defined to have it value automatically added with a sequence number generator. An INDENTITY column is normally used for the primary key column in a table.

For example, we can add a new column, CustomID, into my Customer table and make it as an INDENTITY column.

herong> sqlcmd -S localhost\SQLEXPRESS -E

1> use AdventureWorks2014
2> go
1> alter table Herong.Customer add CustomerID int IDENTITY
2> go

If you try to add values to an INDENTITY column in INSERT statements, you will get an error as shown in the sample program below:

/* InsertIdentity.java
 * Copyright (c) HerongYang.com. All Rights Reserved.
 */
import java.sql.*;
public class InsertIdentity {
  public static void main(String [] args) {
    Connection con = null;
    try {

      con = DriverManager.getConnection(
          "jdbc:sqlserver://localhost\\SQLEXPRESS;"
        + "user=herong;password=T0pSecret;"
        + "database=AdventureWorks2019");
      Statement sta = con.createStatement();

// insert a single row
      int count = sta.executeUpdate(
        "INSERT INTO Herong.Customer"
        + " (CustomerID, FirstName, LastName, ModifiedDate)"
        + " VALUES (1001, 'Herong', 'Yang', '2007-04-01')");
      System.out.println("Number of rows inserted: "+count);

      sta.close();
      con.close();
    } catch (Exception e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
    }
  }
}

Here is the error message from this program:

herong> java -cp .;mssql-jdbc-9.4.1.jre16.jar InsertIdentity

com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerException:
Cannot insert explicit value for identity column
in table 'Customer' when IDENTITY_INSERT is set to OFF.

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) Introduction

 JDK (Java SE) Installation

 Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition

 Microsoft JDBC Driver for SQL Server

 Microsoft JDBC Driver - Query Statements and Result Sets

 Microsoft JDBC Driver - DatabaseMetaData Object

 Microsoft JDBC Driver - DDL Statements

Microsoft JDBC Driver - DML Statements

 "SELECT ... INTO" Statements

 "INSERT INTO" Statements

"INSERT INTO" Statements with INDENTITY Columns

 "UPDATE" Statements

 "DELETE FROM" Statements

 SQL Server - PreparedStatement

 SQL Server CLOB (Character Large Object) - TEXT

 SQL Server BLOB (Binary Large Object) - BLOB

 Using Connection Pool with JDBC

 JDBC-ODBC Bridge Driver - sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver

 JDBC-ODBC Bridge Driver - Flat Text Files

 JDBC-ODBC Bridge Driver - MS Access

 JDBC-ODBC Bridge Driver - MS SQL Server

 Archived Tutorials

 References

 Full Version in PDF/EPUB