VALUES(7)

✨ VALUES ✨

ok so this is the VALUES page from the PostgreSQL 14.24 Documentation, section 7 of the manual — the one all about computing a set of rows 💖 welcome, bestie, pull up a chair 🫶

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🎀 NAME 🎀

VALUES — compute a set of rows. that's it, that's the whole vibe. it makes rows 🦋

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🌸 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 ]

look at all those optional square-bracket clauses living their best life 😌 every single one of them is optional, and every single one of them is real.

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💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

okay so VALUES computes a row value or a whole set of row values that you specify with value expressions. its most iconic use is generating a "constant table" inside a bigger command — but ngl, it can absolutely be used on its own too. main character energy either way 💅

when you specify more than one row, all the rows must have the same number of elements. like, no cap, they gotta match. the data types of the resulting table's columns get determined by combining the explicit or inferred types of the expressions appearing in that column, using the exact same rules as for UNION (see Section 10.5). so if you already know how UNION types things, you already know this. iykyk 🤝

inside larger commands, VALUES is syntactically allowed anywhere that SELECT is ✨ because the grammar treats it like a SELECT, you can use the ORDER BY, LIMIT (or equivalently FETCH FIRST), and OFFSET clauses with a VALUES command. slay.

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🔥 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 💫 but heads up: DEFAULT cannot be used when VALUES appears in other contexts. only INSERT. periodt.
• 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 💜

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⭐ NOTES ⭐

💀 real talk, listen to this one: VALUES lists with very large numbers of rows should be avoided, because you might encounter out-of-memory failures or poor performance. not a cute look. not the vibe.

but there's a glow-up: VALUES appearing within INSERT is a special case — because the desired column types are known from the INSERT's target table and don't need to be inferred by scanning the VALUES list — so it can handle larger lists than are practical in other contexts. king behavior honestly 👑

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

a bare VALUES command, just out here on its own:

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 though, VALUES is used within a larger SQL command, and 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. so don't come for me if you're on something else.)

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. literally just less typing, bestie, take the free win 😭

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🦋 COMPATIBILITY 🦋

VALUES conforms to the SQL standard, no notes, ate and left no crumbs ✨ but LIMIT and OFFSET are PostgreSQL extensions — see also under SELECT(7) 👑

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🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

INSERT(7), SELECT(7) — go read those next, they're the whole friend group 💖

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and that's the page!! written against PostgreSQL 14.24, dated 2026, section 7 of the manual, and this sign-off is brought to you by the VALUES girlies 💅 see you in the group chat 🎀