Description
VALUES computes a row value or set of row values
specified by value expressions. It is most commonly used to generate
a "constant table" within a larger command, but it can be
used on its own.
When more than one row is specified, all the rows must have the same
number of elements. The data types of the resulting table's columns are
determined by combining the explicit or inferred types of the expressions
appearing in that column, using the same rules as for UNION
(see Section 10.5).
Within larger commands, VALUES is syntactically allowed
anywhere that SELECT is. Because it is treated like a
SELECT by the grammar, it is possible to use
the ORDER BY, LIMIT (or
equivalently FETCH FIRST),
and OFFSET clauses with a
VALUES command.
Examples
A bare VALUES command:
VALUES (1, 'one'), (2, 'two'), (3, 'three');
This will return a table of two columns and three rows. It's effectively
equivalent to:
SELECT 1 AS column1, 'one' AS column2
UNION ALL
SELECT 2, 'two'
UNION ALL
SELECT 3, 'three';
More usually, VALUES is used within a larger SQL command.
The most common use is in INSERT:
INSERT INTO films (code, title, did, date_prod, kind)
VALUES ('T_601', 'Yojimbo', 106, '1961-06-16', 'Drama');
In the context of INSERT, entries of a VALUES list
can be DEFAULT to indicate that the column default
should be used here instead of specifying a value:
INSERT INTO films VALUES
('UA502', 'Bananas', 105, DEFAULT, 'Comedy', '82 minutes'),
('T_601', 'Yojimbo', 106, DEFAULT, 'Drama', DEFAULT);
VALUES can also be used where a sub-SELECT might
be written, for example in a FROM clause:
SELECT f.*
FROM films f, (VALUES('MGM', 'Horror'), ('UA', 'Sci-Fi')) AS t (studio, kind)
WHERE f.studio = t.studio AND f.kind = t.kind;
UPDATE employees SET salary = salary * v.increase
FROM (VALUES(1, 200000, 1.2), (2, 400000, 1.4)) AS v (depno, target, increase)
WHERE employees.depno = v.depno AND employees.sales >= v.target;
Note that an AS clause is required when VALUES
is used in a FROM clause, just as is true for
SELECT. It is not required that the AS clause
specify names for all the columns, but it's good practice to do so.
(The default column names for VALUES are column1,
column2, etc in PostgreSQL, but
these names might be different in other database systems.)
When VALUES is used in INSERT, the values are all
automatically coerced to the data type of the corresponding destination
column. When it's used in other contexts, it might be necessary to specify
the correct data type. If the entries are all quoted literal constants,
coercing the first is sufficient to determine the assumed type for all:
SELECT * FROM machines
WHERE ip_address IN (VALUES('192.168.0.1'::inet), ('192.168.0.10'), ('192.168.1.43'));
Tip: For simple IN tests, it's better to rely on the
list-of-scalars form of IN than to write a VALUES
query as shown above. The list of scalars method requires less writing
and is often more efficient.