Creating a basic table involves naming the table and defining its columns and each column’s data type.
The SQL Server CREATE TABLE statement is used to create a new table.
Syntax
Following is the basic syntax of CREATE TABLE statement −
CREATE TABLE table_name(
column1 datatype,
column2 datatype,
column3 datatype,
.....
columnN datatype,
PRIMARY KEY( one or more columns ));
CREATE TABLE is the keyword telling the database system what you want to do. In this case, you want to create a new table. The unique name or identifier for the table follows the CREATE TABLE statement. Then in brackets comes the list defining each column in the table and what sort of data type it is. The syntax becomes clearer to understand with the following example.
A copy of an existing table can be created using a combination of the CREATE TABLE statement and the SELECT statement. You can check complete details at Create Table Using another Table.
Example
In this example, let’s create a CUSTOMERS table with ID as primary key and NOT NULL are the constraints showing that these fields cannot be NULL while creating records in this table −
CREATE TABLE CUSTOMERS(
ID INT NOT NULL,
NAME VARCHAR (20) NOT NULL,
AGE INT NOT NULL,
ADDRESS CHAR (25) ,
SALARY DECIMAL (18, 2),
PRIMARY KEY (ID));
You can verify if your table has been created successfully by looking at the message displayed by the SQL server, otherwise, you can use the following command −
exec sp_columns CUSTOMERS
The above command produces the following output.
TABLE_QUALIFIER TABLE_OWNER TABLE_NAME COLUMN_NAME DATA_TYPE TYPE_NAME
PRECISION LENGTH SCALE RADIX NULLABLE REMARKS COLUMN_DEF SQL_DATA_TYPE
SQL_DATETIME_SUB CHAR_OCTET_LENGTH ORDINAL_POSITION IS_NULLABLE SS_DATA_TYPE
TestDB dbo CUSTOMERS ID 4 int 10 4 0 10 0
NULL NULL 4 NULL NULL 1 NO 56
TestDB dbo CUSTOMERS NAME 12 varchar 20 20 NULL NULL 0
NULL NULL 12 NULL 20 2 NO 39
TestDB dbo CUSTOMERS AGE 4 int 10 4 0 10 0
NULL NULL 4 NULL NULL 3 NO 56
TestDB dbo CUSTOMERS ADDRESS 1 char 25 25 NULL NULL 1
NULL NULL 1 NULL 25 4 YES 39
TestDB dbo CUSTOMERS SALARY 3 decimal 18 20 2 10 1
NULL NULL 3 NULL NULL 5 YES 106
You can now see that the CUSTOMERS table is available in your database which you can use to store required information related to customers.
