Manpages

NAME

SELECT − retrieve rows from a table or view

SYNOPSIS

SELECT [ ALL | DISTINCT [ ON ( expression [, ...] ) ] ]
* | expression [ AS output_name ] [, ...]
[ FROM from_item [, ...] ]
[ WHERE condition ]
[ GROUP BY expression [, ...] ]
[ HAVING condition [, ...] ]
[ { UNION | INTERSECT | EXCEPT } [ ALL ] select ]
[ ORDER BY expression [ ASC | DESC | USING operator ] [, ...] ]
[ LIMIT { count | ALL } ]
[ OFFSET start ]
[ FOR UPDATE [ OF table_name [, ...] ] ]

where from_item can be one of:

[ ONLY ] table_name [ * ] [ [ AS ] alias [ ( column_alias [, ...] ) ] ]
( select ) [ AS ] alias [ ( column_alias [, ...] ) ]
function_name ( [ argument [, ...] ] ) [ AS ] alias [ ( column_alias [, ...] | column_definition [, ...] ) ]
function_name ( [ argument [, ...] ] ) AS ( column_definition [, ...] )
from_item [ NATURAL ] join_type from_item [ ON join_condition | USING ( join_column [, ...] ) ]

[Comment: FIXME: This last syntax is incorrect if the join type is an INNER or OUTER join (in which case one of NATURAL, ON ..., or USING ... is mandatory, not optional). What’s the best way to fix this?]

DESCRIPTION

SELECT retrieves rows from one or more tables. The general processing of SELECT is as follows:

You must have SELECT privilege on a table to read its values. The use of FOR UPDATE requires UPDATE privilege as well.

PARAMETERS

FROM CLAUSE
The FROM clause specifies one or more source tables for the SELECT. If multiple sources are specified, the result is the Cartesian product (cross join) of all the sources. But usually qualification conditions are added to restrict the returned rows to a small subset of the Cartesian product.

FROM-clause elements can contain:
table_name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing table or view. If ONLY is specified, only that table is scanned. If ONLY is not specified, the table and all its descendant tables (if any) are scanned. * can be appended to the table name to indicate that descendant tables are to be scanned, but in the current version, this is the default behavior. (In releases before 7.1, ONLY was the default behavior.) The default behavior can be modified by changing the sql_interitance configuration option.

function_name

Function calls can appear in the FROM clause. (This is especially useful for functions that return result sets, but any function can be used.) This acts as though its output were created as a temporary table for the duration of this single SELECT command. An alias may also be used. If an alias is written, a column alias list can also be written to provide substitute names for one or more attributes of the function’s composite return type. If the function has been defined as returning the record data type, then an alias or the key word AS must be present, followed by a column definition list in the form ( column_name data_type [, ... ] ). The column definition list must match the actual number and types of columns returned by the function.

join_type

One of

For the INNER and OUTER join types, a join condition must be specified, namely exactly one of NATURAL, ON join_condition, or USING (join_column [, ...]). See below for the meaning. For CROSS JOIN, none of these clauses may appear.

A JOIN clause, combines two FROM items. (Use parentheses if necessary to determine the order of nesting.)

CROSS JOIN and INNER JOIN produce a simple Cartesian product, the same as you get from listing the two items at the top level of FROM. CROSS JOIN is equivalent to INNER JOIN ON (true), that is, no rows are removed by qualification. These join types are just a notational convenience, since they do nothing you couldn’t do with plain FROM and WHERE.

LEFT OUTER JOIN returns all rows in the qualified Cartesian product (i.e., all combined rows that pass its join condition), plus one copy of each row in the left-hand table for which there was no right-hand row that passed the join condition. This left-hand row is extended to the full width of the joined table by inserting null values for the right-hand columns. Note that only the JOIN clauses own condition is considered while deciding which rows have matches. Outer conditions are applied afterwards.

Conversely, RIGHT OUTER JOIN returns all the joined rows, plus one row for each unmatched right-hand row (extended with nulls on the left). This is just a notational convenience, since you could convert it to a LEFT OUTER JOIN by switching the left and right inputs.

FULL OUTER JOIN returns all the joined rows, plus one row for each unmatched left-hand row (extended with nulls on the right), plus one row for each unmatched right-hand row (extended with nulls on the left).
ON join_condition

join_condition is an expression resulting in a value of type boolean (similar to a WHERE clause) that specifies which rows in a join are considered to match.

USING (join_column [, ...])

A clause of the form USING ( a, b, ... ) is shorthand for ON left_table.a = right_table.a AND left_table.b = right_table.b .... Also, USING implies that only one of each pair of equivalent columns will be included in the join output, not both.

NATURAL

NATURAL is shorthand for a USING list that mentions all columns in the two tables that have the same names.

WHERE CLAUSE
The optional WHERE clause has the general form

WHERE condition

where condition is any expression that evaluates to a result of type boolean. Any row that does not satisfy this condition will be eliminated from the output. A row satisfies the condition if it returns true when the actual row values are substituted for any variable references.

GROUP BY CLAUSE
The optional GROUP BY clause has the general form

GROUP BY expression [, ...]

GROUP BY will condense into a single row all selected rows that share the same values for the grouped expressions. expression can be an input column name, or the name or ordinal number of an output column (SELECT list), or it can be an arbitrary expression formed from input-column values. In case of ambiguity, a GROUP BY name will be interpreted as an input-column name rather than an output column name.

Aggregate functions, if any are used, are computed across all rows making up each group, producing a separate value for each group (whereas without GROUP BY, an aggregate produces a single value computed across all the selected rows). When GROUP BY is present, it is not valid for the SELECT list expressions to refer to ungrouped columns except within aggregate functions, since there would be more than one possible value to return for an ungrouped column.

HAVING CLAUSE
The optional HAVING clause has the general form

HAVING condition

where condition is the same as specified for the WHERE clause.

HAVING eliminates group rows that do not satisfy the condition. HAVING is different from WHERE: WHERE filters individual rows before the application of GROUP BY, while HAVING filters group rows created by GROUP BY. Each column referenced in condition must unambiguously reference a grouping column, unless the reference appears within an aggregate function.

UNION CLAUSE
The UNION clause has this general form:

select_statement UNION [ ALL ] select_statement

select_statement is any SELECT statement without an ORDER BY, LIMIT, or FOR UPDATE clause. (ORDER BY and LIMIT can be attached to a subexpression if it is enclosed in parentheses. Without parentheses, these clauses will be taken to apply to the result of the UNION, not to its right-hand input expression.)

The UNION operator computes the set union of the rows returned by the involved SELECT statements. A row is in the set union of two result sets if it appears in at least one of the result sets. The two SELECT statements that represent the direct operands of the UNION must produce the same number of columns, and corresponding columns must be of compatible data types.

The result of UNION does not contain any duplicate rows unless the ALL option is specified. ALL prevents elimination of duplicates.

Multiple UNION operators in the same SELECT statement are evaluated left to right, unless otherwise indicated by parentheses.

Currently, FOR UPDATE may not be specified either for a UNION result or for the inputs of UNION.

INTERSECT CLAUSE
The INTERSECT clause has this general form:

select_statement INTERSECT [ ALL ] select_statement

select_statement is any SELECT statement without an ORDER BY, LIMIT, or FOR UPDATE clause.

The INTERSECT operator computes the set intersection of the rows returned by the involved SELECT statements. A row is in the intersection of two result sets if it appears in both result sets.

The result of INTERSECT does not contain any duplicate rows unless the ALL option is specified. With ALL, a row that has m duplicates in the left table and n duplicates in the right table will appear min(m,n) times in the result set.

Multiple INTERSECT operators in the same SELECT statement are evaluated left to right, unless parentheses dictate otherwise. INTERSECT binds more tightly than UNION. That is, A UNION B INTERSECT C will be read as A UNION (B INTERSECT C).

EXCEPT CLAUSE
The EXCEPT clause has this general form:

select_statement EXCEPT [ ALL ] select_statement

select_statement is any SELECT statement without an ORDER BY, LIMIT, or FOR UPDATE clause.

The EXCEPT operator computes the set of rows that are in the result of the left SELECT statement but not in the result of the right one.

The result of EXCEPT does not contain any duplicate rows unless the ALL option is specified. With ALL, a row that has m duplicates in the left table and n duplicates in the right table will appear max(m-n,0) times in the result set.

Multiple EXCEPT operators in the same SELECT statement are evaluated left to right, unless parentheses dictate otherwise. EXCEPT binds at the same level as UNION.

SELECT LIST
The SELECT list (between the key words SELECT and FROM) specifies expressions that form the output rows of the SELECT statement. The expressions can (and usually do) refer to columns computed in the FROM clause. Using the clause AS output_name, another name can be specified for an output column. This name is primarily used to label the column for display. It can also be used to refer to the column’s value in ORDER BY and GROUP BY clauses, but not in the WHERE or HAVING clauses; there you must write out the expression instead.

Instead of an expression, * can be written in the output list as a shorthand for all the columns of the selected rows. Also, one can write table_name.* as a shorthand for the columns coming from just that table.

ORDER BY CLAUSE
The optional ORDER BY clause has this general form:

ORDER BY expression [ ASC | DESC | USING operator ] [, ...]

expression can be the name or ordinal number of an output column (SELECT list), or it can be an arbitrary expression formed from input-column values.

The ORDER BY clause causes the result rows to be sorted according to the specified expressions. If two rows are equal according to the leftmost expression, the are compared according to the next expression and so on. If they are equal according to all specified expressions, they are returned in random order.

The ordinal number refers to the ordinal (left-to-right) position of the result column. This feature makes it possible to define an ordering on the basis of a column that does not have a unique name. This is never absolutely necessary because it is always possible to assign a name to a result column using the AS clause.

It is also possible to use arbitrary expressions in the ORDER BY clause, including columns that do not appear in the SELECT result list. Thus the following statement is valid:

SELECT name FROM distributors ORDER BY code;

A limitation of this feature is that an ORDER BY clause applying to the result of a UNION, INTERSECT, or EXCEPT clause may only specify an output column name or number, not an expression.

If an ORDER BY expression is a simple name that matches both a result column name and an input column name, ORDER BY will interpret it as the result column name. This is the opposite of the choice that GROUP BY will make in the same situation. This inconsistency is made to be compatible with the SQL standard.

Optionally one may add the key word ASC (ascending) or DESC (descending) after each expression in the ORDER BY clause. If not specified, ASC is assumed by default. Alternatively, a specific ordering operator name may be specified in the USING clause. ASC is usually equivalent to USING < and DESC is usually equivalent to USING >. (But the creator of a user-defined data type can define exactly what the default sort ordering is, and it might correspond to operators with other names.)

The null value sorts higher than any other value. In other words, with ascending sort order, null values sort at the end, and with descending sort order, null values sort at the beginning.

Character-string data is sorted according to the locale-specific collation order that was established when the database cluster was initialized.

LIMIT CLAUSE
The LIMIT clause consists of two independent clauses:

LIMIT { count | ALL }
OFFSET start

count specifies the maximum number of rows to return, and start specifies the number of rows to skip before starting to return rows.

When using LIMIT, it is a good idea to use an ORDER BY clause that constrains the result rows into a unique order. Otherwise you will get an unpredictable subset of the query’s rows---you may be asking for the tenth through twentieth rows, but tenth through twentieth in what ordering? You don’t know what ordering unless you specify ORDER BY.

The query planner takes LIMIT into account when generating a query plan, so you are very likely to get different plans (yielding different row orders) depending on what you use for LIMIT and OFFSET. Thus, using different LIMIT/OFFSET values to select different subsets of a query result will give inconsistent results unless you enforce a predictable result ordering with ORDER BY. This is not a bug; it is an inherent consequence of the fact that SQL does not promise to deliver the results of a query in any particular order unless ORDER BY is used to constrain the order.

DISTINCT CLAUSE
If DISTINCT is specified, all duplicate rows are removed from the result set (one row is kept from each group of duplicates). ALL specifies the opposite: all rows are kept; that is the default.

DISTINCT ON ( expression [, ...] ) keeps only the first row of each set of rows where the given expressions evaluate to equal. The DISTINCT ON expressions are interpreted using the same rules as for ORDER BY (see above). Note that the ’’first row’’ of each set is unpredictable unless ORDER BY is used to ensure that the desired row appears first. For example,

SELECT DISTINCT ON (location) location, time, report
FROM weather_reports
ORDER BY location, time DESC;

retrieves the most recent weather report for each location. But if we had not used ORDER BY to force descending order of time values for each location, we’d have gotten a report from an unpredictable time for each location.

FOR UPDATE CLAUSE
The FOR UPDATE clause has this form:

FOR UPDATE [ OF table_name [, ...] ]

FOR UPDATE causes the rows retrieved by the SELECT statement to be locked as though for update. This prevents them from being modified or deleted by other transactions until the current transaction ends. That is, other transactions that attempt UPDATE, DELETE, or SELECT FOR UPDATE of these rows will be blocked until the current transaction ends. Also, if an UPDATE, DELETE, or SELECT FOR UPDATE from another transaction has already locked a selected row or rows, SELECT FOR UPDATE will wait for the other transaction to complete, and will then lock and return the updated row (or no row, if the row was deleted). For further discussion see the chapter called ’’Concurrency Control’’ in the documentation.

If specific tables are named in FOR UPDATE, then only rows coming from those tables are locked; any other tables used in the SELECT are simply read as usual.

FOR UPDATE cannot be used in contexts where returned rows can’t be clearly identified with individual table rows; for example it can’t be used with aggregation.

FOR UPDATE may appear before LIMIT for compatibility with PostgreSQL versions before 7.3. It effectively executes after LIMIT, however, and so that is the recommended place to write it.

EXAMPLES

To join the table films with the table distributors:

SELECT f.title, f.did, d.name, f.date_prod, f.kind
FROM distributors d, films f
WHERE f.did = d.did

title | did | name | date_prod | kind
-------------------+-----+--------------+------------+----------
The Third Man | 101 | British Lion | 1949-12-23 | Drama
The African Queen | 101 | British Lion | 1951-08-11 | Romantic
...

To sum the column len of all films and group the results by kind:

SELECT kind, sum(len) AS total FROM films GROUP BY kind;

kind | total
----------+-------
Action | 07:34
Comedy | 02:58
Drama | 14:28
Musical | 06:42
Romantic | 04:38

To sum the column len of all films, group the results by kind and show those group totals that are less than 5 hours:

SELECT kind, sum(len) AS total
FROM films
GROUP BY kind
HAVING sum(len) < interval ’5 hours’;

kind | total
----------+-------
Comedy | 02:58
Romantic | 04:38

The following two examples are identical ways of sorting the individual results according to the contents of the second column (name):

SELECT * FROM distributors ORDER BY name;
SELECT * FROM distributors ORDER BY 2;

did | name
-----+------------------
109 | 20th Century Fox
110 | Bavaria Atelier
101 | British Lion
107 | Columbia
102 | Jean Luc Godard
113 | Luso films
104 | Mosfilm
103 | Paramount
106 | Toho
105 | United Artists
111 | Walt Disney
112 | Warner Bros.
108 | Westward

This example shows how to obtain the union of the tables distributors and actors, restricting the results to those that begin with letter W in each table. Only distinct rows are wanted, so the key word ALL is omitted.

distributors: actors:
did | name id | name
-----+-------------- ----+----------------
108 | Westward 1 | Woody Allen
111 | Walt Disney 2 | Warren Beatty
112 | Warner Bros. 3 | Walter Matthau
... ...

SELECT distributors.name
FROM distributors
WHERE distributors.name LIKE ’W%’
UNION
SELECT actors.name
FROM actors
WHERE actors.name LIKE ’W%’;

name
----------------
Walt Disney
Walter Matthau
Warner Bros.
Warren Beatty
Westward
Woody Allen

This example shows how to use a function in the FROM clause, both with and without a column definition list.

CREATE FUNCTION distributors(int) RETURNS SETOF distributors AS ’
SELECT * FROM distributors WHERE did = $1;

SELECT * FROM distributors(111);
did | name
-----+-------------
111 | Walt Disney

CREATE FUNCTION distributors_2(int) RETURNS SETOF record AS ’
SELECT * FROM distributors WHERE did = $1;

SELECT * FROM distributors_2(111) AS (f1 int, f2 text);
f1 | f2
-----+-------------
111 | Walt Disney

COMPATIBILITY

Of course, the SELECT statement is compatible with the SQL standard. But there are some extensions and some missing features.

OMITTED FROM CLAUSES
PostgreSQL allows one to omit the FROM clause. It has a straightforward use to compute the results of simple expressions:

SELECT 2+2;

?column?
----------
4

Some other SQL databases cannot do this except by introducing a dummy one-row table from which to do the SELECT.

A less obvious use is to abbreviate a normal SELECT from tables:

SELECT distributors.* WHERE distributors.name = ’Westward’;

did | name
-----+----------
108 | Westward

This works because an implicit FROM item is added for each table that is referenced in other parts of the SELECT statement but not mentioned in FROM.

While this is a convenient shorthand, it’s easy to misuse. For example, the command

SELECT distributors.* FROM distributors d;

is probably a mistake; most likely the user meant

SELECT d.* FROM distributors d;

rather than the unconstrained join

SELECT distributors.* FROM distributors d, distributors distributors;

that he will actually get. To help detect this sort of mistake, PostgreSQL will warn if the implicit-FROM feature is used in a SELECT statement that also contains an explicit FROM clause. Also, it is possible to disable the implicit-FROM feature by setting the ADD_MISSING_FROM parameter to false.

THE AS KEY WORD
In the SQL standard, the optional key word AS is just noise and can be omitted without affecting the meaning. The PostgreSQL parser requires this key word when renaming output columns because the type extensibility features lead to parsing ambiguities without it. AS is optional in FROM items, however.

NAMESPACE AVAILABLE TO GROUP BY AND ORDER BY
In the SQL92 standard, an ORDER BY clause may only use result column names or numbers, while a GROUP BY clause may only use expressions based on input column names. PostgreSQL extends each of these clauses to allow the other choice as well (but it uses the standard’s interpretation if there is ambiguity). PostgreSQL also allows both clauses to specify arbitrary expressions. Note that names appearing in an expression will always be taken as input-column names, not as result-column names.

SQL99 uses a slightly different definition which is not upward compatible with SQL92. In most cases, however, PostgreSQL will interpret an ORDER BY or GROUP BY expression the same way SQL99 does.

NONSTANDARD CLAUSES
The clauses DISTINCT ON, LIMIT, and OFFSET are not defined in the SQL standard.