SET (session variable)

On this page

The SET statement can modify one of the session configuration variables. These can also be queried via SHOW.

Required privileges

No privileges are required to modify the session settings.

Synopsis

Parameters

The SET <session variable> statement accepts two parameters: the variable name and the value to use to modify the variable.

The variable name is case insensitive. The value can be a list of one or more items. For example, the variable search_path is multi-valued.

Supported variables

Special syntax cases:

Examples

Set simple variables

The following demonstrates how SET can be used to configure the default database for the current session:

> SET database = movr;

> SHOW database;

  database
+----------+
  movr
(1 row)

Set variables to values containing spaces

The following demonstrates how to use quoting to use values containing spaces:

> SET database = "database name with spaces";

> SHOW database;

  database
+----------+
  database name with spaces
(1 row)

Set variables to a list of values

The following demonstrates how to assign a list of values:

> SET search_path = pg_catalog,public;

> SHOW search_path;

     search_path
+--------------------+
  pg_catalog, public
(1 row)

Reset a variable to its default value

> SHOW search_path;

  search_path
+-------------+
  public
(1 row)

> SET search_path = 'app';

> SHOW search_path;

  search_path
+-------------+
  app
(1 row)

> SET search_path = DEFAULT;

> SHOW search_path;

  search_path
+-------------+
  public
(1 row)

SET TIME ZONE

You can control the default time zone for a session with SET TIME ZONE. This will apply an offset to all TIMESTAMPTZ/TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE and TIMETZ/TIME WITH TIME ZONE values in the session. By default, CockroachDB uses UTC as the time zone for SET TIME ZONE offsets.

Parameters

The input passed to SET TIME ZONE indicates the time zone for the current session. This value can be a string representation of a local system-defined time zone (e.g., 'EST', 'America/New_York') or a positive or negative numeric offset from UTC (e.g., -7, +7, or UTC-7, UTC+7) or GMT (e.g., GMT-7, GMT+7). The numeric offset input can also be colon-delimited (e.g., -7:00, GMT+7:00).

When setting a time zone, note the following:

• Timezone abbreviations are case-insensitive.

• Timezone abbreviations must be part of the tz database, as recognized by the tzdata Golang package.

• DEFAULT, LOCAL, or 0 sets the session time zone to UTC.

• Only offsets specified by integers (e.g., -7, 7) use the ISO 8601 time offset (i.e., the offset input is parsed as hours east of UTC). If you explicitly specify UTC or GMT for the time zone offset (e.g., UTC-7,GMT+7), or if the numeric input is colon-delimited (e.g., -7:00, GMT+7:00), CockroachDB uses the POSIX time offset instead (i.e., hours west of the specified time zone). This means that specifying an offset of -7 (i.e., -7 east of UTC) is equivalent to specifying GMT+7 (i.e., 7 west of UTC).

Example: Set the default time zone via SET TIME ZONE

> SET TIME ZONE 'EST'; -- same as SET "timezone" = 'EST'

> SHOW TIME ZONE;

  timezone
+----------+
  EST
(1 row)

> SET TIME ZONE DEFAULT; -- same as SET "timezone" = DEFAULT

> SHOW TIME ZONE;

  timezone
+----------+
  UTC
(1 row)

SET TRACING

SET TRACING changes the trace recording state of the current session. A trace recording can be inspected with the SHOW TRACE FOR SESSION statement.

Known Limitations

SET does not properly apply ROLLBACK within a transaction. For example, in the following transaction, showing the TIME ZONE variable does not return 2 as expected after the rollback:

SET TIME ZONE +2;
BEGIN;
SET TIME ZONE +3;
ROLLBACK;
SHOW TIME ZONE;

timezone
------------
3

Tracking GitHub Issue

See also

• RESET
• SET TRANSACTION
• SET CLUSTER SETTING
• SHOW (session variable)
• The TIMESTAMP and TIMESTAMPTZ data types.
• SHOW TRACE FOR SESSION

Was this helpful?