Oracle 23ai: New INSERT Statement Features and Practical Examples (Part 2)

 

Introduction

With Oracle Database 23ai, the humble INSERT statement has received some genuinely useful upgrades. What was once a straightforward data-loading operation now supports more advanced practical use cases, especially for modern applications. Whether you’re working with AI-related data, handling high-volume inserts, or trying to simplify everyday SQL logic, these new features are worth paying attention to. Oracle has clearly focused on reducing complexity while improving performance and flexibility. In this blog, I’ll walk through four notable INSERT enhancements in Oracle 23ai. Each one addresses a real-world problem that developers and DBAs commonly face.

Oracle 23ai: New INSERT Statement Features and Practical Examples (Part 1)

 

Introduction

Oracle Database 23ai introduces a major evolution of the INSERT statement, modernizing one of the most frequently used DML operations in Oracle SQL. These enhancements are designed to make data insertion clearer, safer, and more flexible, especially in environments with wide tables, evolving schemas, and bulk data loads. New capabilities such as INSERT … SET, INSERT … BY NAME, multi-row inserts using the VALUES clause, and support for non-numeric column assignments in SET-based inserts reduce reliance on column order, simplify SQL syntax, and help prevent common data-mapping errors. Together, these features significantly improve code readability and developer productivity while aligning Oracle SQL more closely with modern database standards.