In some embodiments, a method receives a query to retrieve data from a source table and insert the data into a target table and allocates a size of memory. A portion of the data from the source table is retrieved based on the size of memory and stored in the memory. Then, the method stores the retrieved portion of the data stored in the memory into the target table and continues to retrieve portions of data from the source table in increments based on the size of memory, store the retrieved portions of data in the memory, and store the retrieved portions of data from the memory in the target table until the data from the source table has been inserted into the target table.