VALUES(7)

💖 VALUES(7) — the manual page, but make it group-chat 💖

okay so bestie, this is the VALUES(7) page from the PostgreSQL 16.15 Documentation and it's genuinely one of my faves because it's short, it's cute, and it does exactly what it says on the tin. like no cap, it's giving "underrated icon" energy. let's get into it 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

VALUES — compute a set of rows. that's it. that's the whole vibe. it makes rows for you 💅

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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 her. she's perfect. she's structured. she has options 🔥

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so VALUES computes a row value, or a whole set of row values, that you specify with value expressions. the classic use case is generating what everybody calls a "constant table" inside a bigger command, but like… she can also stand on her own two feet. main character energy, honestly 👑

when you specify more than one row, all the rows must have the same number of elements. no exceptions, bestie, the vibes have to 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 same rules as for UNION (see Section 10.5). so yeah, UNION rules apply, it's a whole family thing 💜

and here's the slay detail: within larger commands, VALUES is syntactically allowed anywhere SELECT is. because the grammar treats it like a SELECT, you can absolutely use the ORDER BY, LIMIT (or equivalently FETCH FIRST), and OFFSET clauses with a VALUES command. she's got range 🌈

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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 DEFAULT cannot be used when VALUES appears in other contexts — like, respect the boundary, she's only flexible in one situation 🙈
• 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. iykyk 📚
• operator — a sorting operator. for details see ORDER BY Clause in the SELECT(7) documentation. yeah, same place, go read it bestie ✨
• count — the maximum number of rows to return. for details see LIMIT Clause in the SELECT(7) documentation. yes queen, we love a cross-reference 🎀
• start — the number of rows to skip before starting to return rows. for details see LIMIT Clause in the SELECT(7) documentation. skipping, but make it legal 💅

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💀 NOTES 💀

okay genuine warning time, no jokes: VALUES lists with very large numbers of rows should be avoided, because you might encounter out-of-memory failures or poor performance. like, she will simply pass out 😭

but!! 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. so if you're inserting, you're kinda eating good. periodt 🍓

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🧚 EXAMPLES 🧚

a bare VALUES command, serving absolutely nothing but rows:

VALUES (1, 'one'), (2, 'two'), (3, 'three');

this will return a table of two columns and three rows. and it's effectively equivalent to:

SELECT 1 AS column1, 'one' AS column2
UNION ALL
SELECT 2, 'two'
UNION ALL
SELECT 3, 'three';

see?? same energy, more typing. the VALUES version is the lowkey smarter option 💜

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more usually, 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');

and 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);

not me loving that you can just say DEFAULT and dip 🙈

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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;

and 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 like, don't assume, bestie 🌍)

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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. so like, do less, win more 🫶

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🌟 COMPATIBILITY 🌟

VALUES conforms to the SQL standard. LIMIT and OFFSET are PostgreSQL extensions; see also under SELECT(7). we're special like that 💅✨

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

INSERT(7), SELECT(7) — go read your siblings, they're iconic too 🌸

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and that's the whole page!! written from the PostgreSQL 16.15 Documentation, dated 2026, and it remains, as always, VALUES(7). slay, bye bestie 💖🎀🦋