How do you create a range from 1 to 10 in SQL? Have you ever thought about it? This is such an easy problem to solve in any imperative language, it’s ridiculous. Take Java (or C, whatever) for instance:

for (int i = 1; i <= 10; i++) System.out.println(i);

This was easy, right? Things even look more lean when using functional programming. Take Scala, for instance:

(1 to 10) foreach { t => println(t) }

We could fill about 25 pages about various ways to do the above in Scala, agreeing on how awesome Scala is (or what hipsters we are).

But how to create a range in SQL?

… And we’ll exclude using stored procedures, because that would be no fun. In SQL, the data source we’re operating on are tables. If we want a range from 1 to 10, we’d probably need a table containing exactly those ten values. Here are a couple of good, bad, and ugly options of doing precisely that in SQL. OK, they’re mostly bad and ugly.

By creating a table

The dumbest way to do this would be to create an actual temporary table just for that purpose:

CREATE TABLE "1 to 10" AS SELECT 1 value FROM DUAL UNION ALL SELECT 2 FROM DUAL UNION ALL SELECT 3 FROM DUAL UNION ALL SELECT 4 FROM DUAL UNION ALL SELECT 5 FROM DUAL UNION ALL SELECT 6 FROM DUAL UNION ALL SELECT 7 FROM DUAL UNION ALL SELECT 8 FROM DUAL UNION ALL SELECT 9 FROM DUAL UNION ALL SELECT 10 FROM DUAL

See also this SQLFiddle

This table can then be used in any type of select. Now that’s pretty dumb but straightforward, right? I mean, how many actual records are you going to put in there?

By using a VALUES() table constructor

This solution isn’t that much better. You can create a derived table and manually add the values from 1 to 10 to that derived table using the VALUES() table constructor. In SQL Server, you could write:

SELECT V FROM ( VALUES (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8), (9), (10) ) [1 to 10](V)

See also this SQLFiddle

By creating enough self-joins of a sufficent number of values

Another “dumb”, yet a bit more generic solution would be to create only a certain amount of constant values in a table, view or CTE (e.g. two) and then self join that table enough times to reach the desired range length (e.g. four times). The following example will produce values from 1 to 10, “easily”:

WITH T(V) AS ( SELECT 0 FROM DUAL UNION ALL SELECT 1 FROM DUAL ) SELECT V FROM ( SELECT 1 + T1.V + 2 * T2.V + 4 * T3.V + 8 * T4.V V FROM T T1, T T2, T T3, T T4 ) WHERE V <= 10 ORDER BY V

See also this SQLFiddle

By using grouping sets

Another way to generate large tables is by using grouping sets, or more specifically by using the CUBE() function. This works much in a similar way as the previous example when self-joining a table with two records:

SELECT ROWNUM FROM ( SELECT 1 FROM DUAL GROUP BY CUBE(1, 2, 3, 4) ) WHERE ROWNUM <= 10

See also this SQLFiddle

By just taking random records from a “large enough” table

In Oracle, you could probably use ALL_OBJECTs . If you’re only counting to 10, you’ll certainly get enough results from that table:

SELECT ROWNUM FROM ALL_OBJECTS WHERE ROWNUM <= 10

See also this SQLFiddle

What’s so “awesome” about this solution is that you can cross join that table several times to be sure to get enough values:

SELECT ROWNUM FROM ALL_OBJECTS, ALL_OBJECTS, ALL_OBJECTS, ALL_OBJECTS WHERE ROWNUM <= 10

OK. Just kidding. Don’t actually do that. Or if you do, don’t blame me if your productive system runs low on memory.

By using the awesome PostgreSQL GENERATE_SERIES() function

Incredibly, this isn’t part of the SQL standard. Neither is it available in most databases but PostgreSQL, which has the GENERATE_SERIES() function. This is much like Scala’s range notation: (1 to 10)

SELECT * FROM GENERATE_SERIES(1, 10)

See also this SQLFiddle

By using CONNECT BY

If you’re using Oracle, then there’s a really easy way to create such a table using the CONNECT BY clause, which is almost as convenient as PostgreSQL’s GENERATE_SERIES() function:

SELECT LEVEL FROM DUAL CONNECT BY LEVEL < 10

See also this SQLFiddle

By using a recursive CTE

Recursive common table expressions are cool, yet utterly unreadable. the equivalent of the above Oracle CONNECT BY clause when written using a recursive CTE would look like this:

WITH "1 to 10"(V) AS ( SELECT 1 FROM DUAL UNION ALL SELECT V + 1 FROM "1 to 10" WHERE V < 10 ) SELECT * FROM "1 to 10"

See also this SQLFiddle

By using Oracle’s MODEL clause

A decent “best of” comparison of how to do things in SQL wouldn’t be complete without at least one example using Oracle’s MODEL clause (see this awesome use-case for Oracle’s spreadsheet feature). Use this clause only to make your co workers really angry when maintaining your SQL code.

Bow before this beauty!

SELECT V FROM ( SELECT 1 V FROM DUAL ) T MODEL DIMENSION BY (ROWNUM R) MEASURES (V) RULES ITERATE (10) ( V[ITERATION_NUMBER] = CV(R) + 1 ) ORDER BY 1

See also this SQLFiddle

Conclusion

There aren’t actually many nice solutions to do such a simple thing in SQL. Clearly, PostgreSQL’s GENERATE_SERIES() table function is the most beautiful solution. Oracle’s CONNECT BY clause comes close. For all other databases, some trickery has to be applied in one way or another.

Unfortunately.