What is the best way to auto-generate INSERT statements for a SQL Server table?

We are writing a new application, and while testing, we will need a bunch of dummy data. I've added that data by using MS Access to dump excel files into the relevant tables.

Every so often, we want to "refresh" the relevant tables, which means dropping them all, re-creating them, and running a saved MS Access append query.

The first part (dropping & re-creating) is an easy sql script, but the last part makes me cringe. I want a single setup script that has a bunch of INSERTs to regenerate the dummy data.

I have the data in the tables now. What is the best way to automatically generate a big list of INSERT statements from that dataset?

The only way I can think of doing it is to save the table to an excel sheet and then write an excel formula to create an INSERT for every row, which is surely not the best way.

I'm using the 2008 Management Studio to connect to a SQL Server 2005 database.

why not just backup the data before your work with it, then restore when you want it to be refreshed?

if you must generate inserts try:

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Don't use inserts, use [BCP](

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)

Not sure, if I understand your question correctly.

If you have data in MS-Access, which you want to move it to SQL Server - you could use DTS.
And, I guess you could use SQL profiler to see all the INSERT statements going by, I suppose.

Do you have data in a production database yet? If so, you could setup a period refresh of the data via DTS. We do ours weekly on the weekends and it is very nice to have clean, real data every week for our testing.

If you don't have production yet, then you should create a database that is they want you want it (fresh). Then, duplicate that database and use that newly created database as your test environment. When you want the clean version, simply duplicate your clean one again and [Bob's your uncle][1].


[1]:

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's_your_uncle

Perhaps you can try the SQL Server Publishing Wizard

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It has a wizard that helps you script insert statements.

You can use SSMS Tools Pack (available for SQL Server 2005 and 2008). It comes with a feature for generating insert statements.

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I have also researched lot on this, but I could not get the concrete solution for this. Currently the approach I follow is copy the contents in excel from SQL Server Managment studio and then import the data into Oracle-TOAD and then generate the insert statements

I use sqlite to do this. I find it very, very useful for creating scratch/test databases.

`sqlite3 foo.sqlite .dump > foo_as_a_bunch_of_inserts.sql`

I'm using SSMS 2008 version 10.0.5500.0. In this version as part of the Generate Scripts wizard, instead of an Advanced button, there is the screen below. In this case, I wanted just the data inserted and no create statements, so I had to change the two circled properties![Script Options][1]




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