INSERT OVER statement?

Question

What the difference between

INSERT INTO table VALUES (values)

and

INSERT OVER table VALUES (values)

?

Answer 1

Of all reserved keywords, only INTO and OVER work.

SQL:2003 mentions OVERRIDING keyword to override the identity (currently only supported by DB2)

Probably, SQL Server parses it for now but does not actually implement.

The plans generated are identical, and ParameterizedText is expanded into INSERT INTO.

So as for 2008R2, the answer would be this:

No difference, except that INSERT OVER has already wasted about 50 manhours of most curious developers to the moment and there is more to go

Answer 2

People at Microsoft say:

Thanks for reporting this issue. We keep recognizing the OVER keyword along with the INTO keyword (with the same meaning) in INSERT statements to provide backward compatibility with the previous versions of SQL Server. This should not present any problem for application development.

Eugene Zabokritski, SQL Engine