September 26, 2024: PostgreSQL 17 Released!
Unsupported versions: 6.5
This documentation is for an unsupported version of PostgreSQL.
You may want to view the same page for the current version, or one of the other supported versions listed above instead.

Populating a Class with Instances

The insert statement is used to populate a class with instances:

INSERT INTO weather
    VALUES ('San Francisco', 46, 50, 0.25, '11/27/1994')
    

You can also use the copy command to perform load large amounts of data from flat (ASCII) files. This is usually faster because the data is read (or written) as a single atomic transaction directly to or from the target table. An example would be:

COPY INTO weather FROM '/home/user/weather.txt'
    USING DELIMITERS '|';
    
where the path name for the source file must be available to the backend server machine, not the client, since the backend server reads the file directly.