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LATERAL
Applies to ✅ Open Source Edition ✅ Express Edition ✅ Professional Edition ✅ Enterprise Edition
LATERAL
is a SQL standard table operator to wrap derived tables (or other table expressions, in some dialects), such that the tables and columns declared before the LATERAL
derived table become in scope. See APPLY for an alternative, SQL Server specific syntax.
An example:
SELECT * FROM AUTHOR, -- All previous objects (i.e. AUTHOR) -- are now in scope for the following subquery LATERAL ( SELECT count(*) FROM BOOK WHERE BOOK.AUTHOR_ID = AUTHOR.ID -- AUTHOR is in scope );
DSL.using(configuration) .select() .from( AUTHOR, lateral( select(count() .from(BOOK) .where(BOOK.AUTHOR_ID.eq(AUTHOR.ID))) ) ) .fetch();
This is most useful for:
- TOP N per category queries, which are harder to implement otherwise
- Local column variables
- Calling table valued functions on a row-by-row basis
Dialect support
This example using jOOQ:
select().from(AUTHOR, lateral(selectCount().from(BOOK).where(BOOK.AUTHOR_ID.eq(AUTHOR.ID))))
Translates to the following dialect specific expressions:
Aurora Postgres, CockroachDB, DB2, Firebird, Hana, MySQL, Oracle, Postgres, Snowflake, Sybase, Trino, YugabyteDB
SELECT AUTHOR.ID, AUTHOR.FIRST_NAME, AUTHOR.LAST_NAME, AUTHOR.DATE_OF_BIRTH, AUTHOR.YEAR_OF_BIRTH, AUTHOR.DISTINGUISHED, alias_124651337.count FROM AUTHOR, LATERAL ( SELECT count(*) FROM BOOK WHERE BOOK.AUTHOR_ID = AUTHOR.ID ) alias_124651337
SQLDataWarehouse, SQLServer
SELECT AUTHOR.ID, AUTHOR.FIRST_NAME, AUTHOR.LAST_NAME, AUTHOR.DATE_OF_BIRTH, AUTHOR.YEAR_OF_BIRTH, AUTHOR.DISTINGUISHED, alias_124651337.count FROM AUTHOR CROSS APPLY ( SELECT count(*) FROM BOOK WHERE BOOK.AUTHOR_ID = AUTHOR.ID ) alias_124651337
ASE, Access, Aurora MySQL, BigQuery, ClickHouse, Derby, DuckDB, Exasol, H2, HSQLDB, Informix, MariaDB, MemSQL, Redshift, SQLite, Teradata, Vertica
/* UNSUPPORTED */
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