NAME

       VALUES - compute a set of rows

SYNOPSIS

       VALUES ( expression [, ...] ) [, ...]
           [ ORDER BY sort_expression [ ASC | DESC | USING operator ] [, ...] ]
           [ LIMIT { count | ALL } ]
           [ OFFSET start [ ROW | ROWS ] ]
           [ FETCH { FIRST | NEXT } [ count ] { ROW | ROWS } ONLY ]

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.

PARAMETERS

       expression
           A constant or expression to compute and insert at the indicated place in the resulting table (set of
           rows). In a VALUES list appearing at the top level of an INSERT, an expression can be replaced by
           DEFAULT to indicate that the destination column's default value should be inserted.  DEFAULT cannot
           be used when VALUES appears in other contexts.

       sort_expression
           An expression or integer constant indicating how to sort the result rows. This expression can refer
           to the columns of the VALUES result as column1, column2, etc. For more details see ORDER BY Clause in
           the SELECT(7) documentation.

       operator
           A sorting operator. For details see ORDER BY Clause in the SELECT(7) documentation.

       count
           The maximum number of rows to return. For details see LIMIT Clause in the SELECT(7) documentation.

       start
           The number of rows to skip before starting to return rows. For details see LIMIT Clause in the
           SELECT(7) documentation.

NOTES

       VALUES lists with very large numbers of rows should be avoided, as you might encounter out-of-memory
       failures or poor performance.  VALUES appearing within INSERT is a special case (because the desired
       column types are known from the INSERT's target table, and need not be inferred by scanning the VALUES
       list), so it can handle larger lists than are practical in other contexts.

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.

COMPATIBILITY

       VALUES conforms to the SQL standard.  LIMIT and OFFSET are PostgreSQL extensions; see also under
       SELECT(7).

SEE ALSO

       INSERT(7), SELECT(7)