# Temporary tables and "select into"

This is again one of those myth where developer think that  using select into much faster then insert into  table command.


It is not!!! in fact insert into is faster in  lot of scenarios.

Overall we should avoid using "select into" especially when selecting into temporary tables and also when you are dealing with large resultset.This is because select into locks the system tables.

 

 when you are doing "select into #" temporary tables, we are locking system objects in tempdb database. This can prevent other users from creating temporary tables unless you are done.

 

Imagine if your inserting into temp table some subset from the table which has million rows,the system tables will be locked for the amount of time that insertion is finish...

 

Please use simple "Insert statement" instead of "select into"