How to select multiple rows filled with constants in Amazon Redshift?

Question

I have already tried the common PostgreSQL answer, but seems like it doesn't work with Redshift:

SELECT  * FROM VALUES (1) AS q (col1);

ERROR: 42883: function values(integer) does not exist

I need this because for some reason I can't use UNION ALL. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Just ran into this myself. Here are the docs on which Postgres features are unsupported in Redshift: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/en_pv/redshift/latest/dg/c_unsupported-postgresql-features.html — stone, Oct 07 '19 at 23:35

score 29 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 11 '15 at 16:14

The correct Postgres syntax would be:

SELECT * FROM (VALUES (1)) AS q (col1);

A set of parentheses was missing.
But it seems Redshift does not even support a VALUES expression outside of INSERT (like modern Postgres does). So, for a single row:

SELECT * FROM (SELECT 1) AS q (col1);

For multiple rows (without using UNION ALL like requested) you can use a temporary table. Note (per documentation):

A temporary table is automatically dropped at the end of the session in which it was created.

CREATE TEMP TABLE q(col1 int);
INSERT INTO q(col1)
VALUES (1), (2), (3);

SELECT  * FROM q;

If UNION ALL would be an option:

SELECT 1 AS col1
UNION ALL SELECT 2
UNION ALL SELECT 3;

How to select multiple rows filled with constants in Amazon Redshift?

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