Creating dummy data with WHILE

Question

I am trying to insert some dummy data into my table using WHILE, but it works very slowly.

I was thinking, maybe I am writing the code incorrectly, could you please look and confirm it?

-- Insert dummy data

DECLARE
    @i          int,
    @Content    int;
SET @i = 5001;

WHILE @i > 5000 AND @i < 10000
BEGIN
    SET @Content = ROUND(((10000-5000)*RAND()+5000),0)
    INSERT INTO dbo.CmsImagesContents
    (ContentId, Title, AltTag, Caption)
    VALUES
    (@Content,'Test Title', 'Test AltTag', 'Test Caption');
    SET @i = @i + 1;
END

Answer 1

Instead of doing 4999 separate insert statements in a loop, you will get much better performance if you do one insert from all 4999 lines. So, if you have a table #T containing 4999 rows, you simply call the following:

INSERT INTO DBO.CmsImagesContents(ContentId, Title, AltTag, Caption)    
SELECT (ABS(CAST(CAST(NEWID() AS VARBINARY) AS INT)) % 5000) + 5000 AS ContentID, 
        'Test Title' AS Title, 'Test AltTag' AS AltTag, 'Test Caption'  AS Caption
FROM #T1

If you need to create such a table of 4999 rows, then the following SQL will work for you:

CREATE TABLE #T1
(
    N INT NOT NULL PRIMARY key
);

WITH L0 AS (SELECT 1 AS N UNION ALL SELECT 1), 
    L1 AS (SELECT A.N FROM L0 AS A CROSS JOIN L0 AS B),
    L2 AS (SELECT A.N FROM L1 AS A CROSS JOIN L1 AS B),
    L3 AS (SELECT A.N FROM L2 AS A CROSS JOIN L2 AS B),
    L4 AS (SELECT A.N FROM L3 AS A CROSS JOIN L3 AS B),
    Nums AS (SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)) AS n FROM L4)

INSERT INTO #T1( N )
SELECT N
FROM Nums
WHERE n < 10000 AND n>5000;