Using a cursor to copy data

Question

I'm writing a script that will take the data in one table, and use a cursor to copy that data to another table. The reason I'm using a cursor is so that I can stagger the dates in a particular field, for testing purposes. I wrote a procedure that will manipulate the data in this table based on the date, so I'm just creating a good amount of data with staggered dates.
DECLARE
    my_row CUSTOMER%ROWTYPE;
    CURSOR my_cursor IS
        SELECT * FROM CUSTOMER;
    counter NUMBER;
BEGIN
    counter := 0;
    FOR my_row IN my_cursor LOOP
        INSERT INTO CUSTOMER_HISTORY
            (CUST_NAME, CUST_CITY, CUST_STATE, CREATE_DATE, ...)
            VALUES
            (my_row.CUST_NAME, my_row.CUST_CITY, my_row.CUST_STATE, TRUNC(SYSDATE - counter), ...);
        counter := counter + 1;
        IF (counter > 15) THEN
            counter := 0;
        END IF;
    END LOOP;  
END;Now, this code does work, and it does what I need it to do. However, what I'd like to know is if there is an easier way. I have to do this with 3 other tables, and some of these tables have 30+ columns, and I'm hoping there's an easier way to copy all of the rows, while changing one column. If not, it's not a huge deal, but that's a lot of column names to copy.
Thanks
Edited by: jjmiller on Jul 14, 2010 1:34 PM

Answer 1

you do not need a curosr loop to do this, a single insert statement will work just fine. something like:
INSERT INTO customer_history (cust_name, cust_city, cust_state, create_date, ...)
SELECT cust_name, cust_city, cust_state, TRUNC(sysdate - MOD(rownum, 15)), ...
FROM customerJohn