Selection queries read and process data in CockroachDB. They are more general than simple SELECT
clauses: they can group one or more selection clauses with set operations and can request a specific ordering or row limit.
Selection queries can occur:
- At the top level of a query, like other SQL statements.
- Between parentheses as a subquery.
- As operand to other statements that take tabular data as input, for example
INSERT
,UPSERT
,CREATE TABLE AS
, orALTER ... SPLIT AT
.
Synopsis
Parameters
Parameter | Description |
---|---|
common_table_expr |
See Common Table Expressions. |
select_clause |
A valid selection clause, either simple or using set operations. |
sort_clause |
An optional ORDER BY clause. See Ordering Query Results for details. |
limit_clause |
An optional LIMIT clause. See Limit Query Results for details. |
offset_clause |
An optional OFFSET clause. See Limit Query Results for details. |
for_locking_clause |
The FOR UPDATE locking clause is used to order transactions by controlling concurrent access to one or more rows of a table. For more information, see SELECT FOR UPDATE . |
The optional LIMIT
and OFFSET
clauses can appear in any order, but if also present, must appear after ORDER BY
.
WITH
, ORDER BY
, LIMIT
, and OFFSET
sub-clauses are all optional, any simple selection clause is also a valid selection query.Selection clauses
A selection clause is the main component of a selection query. A selection clause defines tabular data. There are four specific syntax forms:
Form | Usage |
---|---|
SELECT |
Load or compute tabular data from various sources. This is the most common selection clause. |
VALUES |
List tabular data by the client. |
TABLE |
Load tabular data from the database. |
Set operations | Combine tabular data from two or more selection clauses. |
TABLE
or SELECT
.Synopsis
VALUES
clause
Syntax
A VALUES
clause defines tabular data defined by the expressions
listed within parentheses. Each parenthesis group defines a single row
in the resulting table.
The columns of the resulting table data have automatically generated names. When the VALUES
clause is used as a subquery,
you can modify these names with AS
.
Example
> VALUES (1, 2, 3), (4, 5, 6);
+---------+---------+---------+
| column1 | column2 | column3 |
+---------+---------+---------+
| 1 | 2 | 3 |
| 4 | 5 | 6 |
+---------+---------+---------+
TABLE
clause
Syntax
A TABLE
clause reads tabular data from a specified table. The
columns of the resulting table data are named after the schema of the
table.
TABLE x
is equivalent to SELECT * FROM x
.
TABLE
, not just simple table or view names.Example
> CREATE TABLE employee_copy AS TABLE employee;
This statement copies the content from table employee
into a new
table. However, the TABLE
clause does not preserve the indexing,
foreign key, or constraint and default information from the schema of the
table it reads from, so in this example, the new table employee_copy
will likely have a simpler schema than employee
.
Other examples:
> TABLE employee;
> INSERT INTO employee_copy TABLE employee;
SELECT
clause
See Simple SELECT
Clause for more
details.
Set operations
Set operations combine data from two selection clauses. They are valid as operand to other set operations or as main component in a selection query.
Synopsis
Set operators
SQL lets you compare the results of multiple selection clauses. You can think of each of the set operators as representing a Boolean operator:
UNION
=OR
INTERSECT
=AND
EXCEPT
=NOT
By default, each of these comparisons displays only one copy of each value (similar to SELECT DISTINCT
). However, to display duplicate values, you can add an ALL
to the clause.
UNION
: Combine two queries
UNION
combines the results of two queries into one result.
> SELECT name
FROM accounts
WHERE state_opened IN ('AZ', 'NY')
UNION
SELECT name
FROM mortgages
WHERE state_opened IN ('AZ', 'NY');
+-----------------+
| name |
+-----------------+
| Naseem Joossens |
| Ricarda Caron |
| Carola Dahl |
| Aygün Sanna |
+-----------------+
To show duplicate rows, you can use ALL
.
> SELECT name
FROM accounts
WHERE state_opened IN ('AZ', 'NY')
UNION ALL
SELECT name
FROM mortgages
WHERE state_opened IN ('AZ', 'NY');
+-----------------+
| name |
+-----------------+
| Naseem Joossens |
| Ricarda Caron |
| Carola Dahl |
| Naseem Joossens |
| Aygün Sanna |
| Carola Dahl |
+-----------------+
INTERSECT
: Retrieve intersection of two queries
INTERSECT
selects only values that are present in both query operands.
> SELECT name
FROM accounts
WHERE state_opened IN ('NJ', 'VA')
INTERSECT
SELECT name
FROM mortgages;
+-----------------+
| name |
+-----------------+
| Danijel Whinery |
| Agar Archer |
+-----------------+
EXCEPT
: Exclude one query's results from another
EXCEPT
selects values that are present in the first query operand but not the second.
> SELECT name
FROM mortgages
EXCEPT
SELECT name
FROM accounts;
+------------------+
| name |
+------------------+
| Günay GarcÃa |
| Karla Goddard |
| Cybele Seaver |
+------------------+
Order results
The following sections provide examples. For more details, see ORDER BY
.
Order retrieved rows by one column
> SELECT *
FROM accounts
WHERE balance BETWEEN 350 AND 500
ORDER BY balance DESC;
+----+--------------------+---------+----------+--------------+
| id | name | balance | type | state_opened |
+----+--------------------+---------+----------+--------------+
| 12 | Raniya Žitnik | 500 | savings | CT |
| 59 | Annibale Karga | 500 | savings | ND |
| 27 | Adelbert Ventura | 500 | checking | IA |
| 86 | Theresa Slaski | 500 | checking | WY |
| 73 | Ruadh Draganov | 500 | checking | TN |
| 16 | Virginia Ruan | 400 | checking | HI |
| 43 | Tahirih Malinowski | 400 | checking | MS |
| 50 | Dusan Mallory | 350 | savings | NV |
+----+--------------------+---------+----------+--------------+
Order retrieved rows by multiple columns
Columns are sorted in the order you list them in sortby_list
. For example, ORDER BY a, b
sorts the rows by column a
and then sorts rows with the same a
value by their column b
values.
> SELECT *
FROM accounts
WHERE balance BETWEEN 350 AND 500
ORDER BY balance DESC, name ASC;
+----+--------------------+---------+----------+--------------+
| id | name | balance | type | state_opened |
+----+--------------------+---------+----------+--------------+
| 27 | Adelbert Ventura | 500 | checking | IA |
| 59 | Annibale Karga | 500 | savings | ND |
| 12 | Raniya Žitnik | 500 | savings | CT |
| 73 | Ruadh Draganov | 500 | checking | TN |
| 86 | Theresa Slaski | 500 | checking | WY |
| 43 | Tahirih Malinowski | 400 | checking | MS |
| 16 | Virginia Ruan | 400 | checking | HI |
| 50 | Dusan Mallory | 350 | savings | NV |
+----+--------------------+---------+----------+--------------+
Limit row count
You can reduce the number of results with LIMIT
.
> SELECT id, name
FROM accounts
LIMIT 5;
+----+------------------+
| id | name |
+----+------------------+
| 1 | Bjorn Fairclough |
| 2 | Bjorn Fairclough |
| 3 | Arturo Nevin |
| 4 | Arturo Nevin |
| 5 | Naseem Joossens |
+----+------------------+
Row-level locking for concurrency control with SELECT FOR UPDATE
The SELECT FOR UPDATE
statement is used to order transactions by controlling concurrent access to one or more rows of a table.
It works by locking the rows returned by a selection query, such that other transactions trying to access those rows are forced to wait for the transaction that locked the rows to finish. These other transactions are effectively put into a queue based on when they tried to read the value of the locked rows.
Because this queueing happens during the read operation, the thrashing that would otherwise occur if multiple concurrently executing transactions attempt to SELECT
the same data and then UPDATE
the results of that selection is prevented. By preventing thrashing, CockroachDB also prevents transaction retries that would otherwise occur due to contention.
As a result, using SELECT FOR UPDATE
leads to increased throughput and decreased tail latency for contended operations.
Note that using SELECT FOR UPDATE
does not completely eliminate the chance of serialization errors, which use the SQLSTATE
error code 40001
, and emit error messages with the string restart transaction
. These errors can also arise due to time uncertainty. To eliminate the need for application-level retry logic, in addition to SELECT FOR UPDATE
your application also needs to use a driver that implements automatic retry handling.
CockroachDB does not support the FOR SHARE
or FOR KEY SHARE
locking strengths.
By default, CockroachDB uses the SELECT FOR UPDATE
locking mechanism during the initial row scan performed in UPDATE
and UPSERT
statement execution. To turn off implicit SELECT FOR UPDATE
locking for UPDATE
and UPSERT
statements, set the enable_implicit_select_for_update
session variable to false
.
For an example showing how to use it, see SELECT FOR UPDATE
.
Composability
Selection clauses are defined in the context of selection queries. Table expressions are defined in the context of the FROM
sub-clause of SELECT
. Nevertheless, you can integrate them with one another to form more complex queries or statements.
Use a selection clause as a selection query
You can use a selection clause as a selection query with no change.
For example, the construct SELECT * FROM accounts
is a selection clause. It is also a valid selection query, and thus can be used as a stand-alone statement by appending a semicolon:
> SELECT * FROM accounts;
+----+-----------------------+---------+----------+--------------+
| id | name | balance | type | state_opened |
+----+-----------------------+---------+----------+--------------+
| 1 | Bjorn Fairclough | 1200 | checking | AL |
| 2 | Bjorn Fairclough | 2500 | savings | AL |
| 3 | Arturo Nevin | 250 | checking | AK |
[ truncated ]
+----+-----------------------+---------+----------+--------------+
Likewise, the construct VALUES (1), (2), (3)
is also a selection
clause and thus can also be used as a selection query on its own:
> VALUES (1), (2), (3);
+---------+
| column1 |
+---------+
| 1 |
| 2 |
| 3 |
+---------+
(3 rows)
Use a table expression as selection clause
You can use a table expression as a selection clause (and thus also a selection query) by prefixing it with TABLE
or by using it as an operand to SELECT * FROM
.
For example, the simple table name customers
is a table expression, which designates all rows in that table. The expressions TABLE accounts
and SELECT * FROM accounts
are valid selection clauses.
Likewise, the SQL join expression customers c JOIN orders o ON c.id = o.customer_id
is a table expression. You can turn it into a valid selection clause, and thus a valid selection query as follows:
> TABLE (customers c JOIN orders o ON c.id = o.customer_id);
> SELECT * FROM customers c JOIN orders o ON c.id = o.customer_id;
Use a selection query as table expression
You can use a selection query (or selection clause) as a table expression by enclosing it between parentheses, which forms a subquery.
For example, the following construct is a selection query, but is not a valid table expression:
> SELECT * FROM customers ORDER BY name LIMIT 5
To make it valid as operand to FROM
or another table expression, you can enclose it between parentheses as follows:
> SELECT id FROM (SELECT * FROM customers ORDER BY name LIMIT 5);
> SELECT o.id
FROM orders o
JOIN (SELECT * FROM customers ORDER BY name LIMIT 5) AS c
ON o.customer_id = c.id;
Use selection queries with other statements
Selection queries are also valid as operand in contexts that require tabular data.
For example:
Statement | Example using SELECT |
Example using VALUES |
Example using TABLE |
---|---|---|---|
INSERT |
INSERT INTO foo SELECT * FROM bar |
INSERT INTO foo VALUES (1), (2), (3) |
INSERT INTO foo TABLE bar |
UPSERT |
UPSERT INTO foo SELECT * FROM bar |
UPSERT INTO foo VALUES (1), (2), (3) |
UPSERT INTO foo TABLE bar |
CREATE TABLE AS |
CREATE TABLE foo AS SELECT * FROM bar CREATE TABLE foo AS VALUES (1),(2),(3) |
CREATE TABLE foo AS TABLE bar |
|
ALTER ... SPLIT AT |
ALTER TABLE foo SPLIT AT SELECT * FROM bar ALTER TABLE foo SPLIT AT VALUES (1),(2),(3) |
ALTER TABLE foo SPLIT AT TABLE bar |
|
Subquery in a table expression | SELECT * FROM (SELECT * FROM bar) |
SELECT * FROM (VALUES (1),(2),(3)) |
SELECT * FROM (TABLE bar) |
Subquery in a scalar expression | SELECT * FROM foo WHERE x IN (SELECT * FROM bar) |
SELECT * FROM foo WHERE x IN (VALUES (1),(2),(3)) |
SELECT * FROM foo WHERE x IN (TABLE bar) |