VALUES — compute a set of rows
VALUES (expression[, ...] ) [, ...] [ ORDER BYsort_expression[ ASC | DESC | USINGoperator] [, ...] ] [ LIMIT {count| ALL } ] [ OFFSETstart[ ROW | ROWS ] ] [ FETCH { FIRST | NEXT } [count] { ROW | ROWS } ONLY ]
   VALUES computes a row value or set of row values
   specified by value expressions.  It is most commonly used to generate
   a “constant table” within a larger command, but it can be
   used on its own.
  
   When more than one row is specified, all the rows must have the same
   number of elements.  The data types of the resulting table's columns are
   determined by combining the explicit or inferred types of the expressions
   appearing in that column, using the same rules as for UNION
   (see Section 10.5).
  
   Within larger commands, VALUES is syntactically allowed
   anywhere that SELECT is.  Because it is treated like a
   SELECT by the grammar, it is possible to use
   the ORDER BY, LIMIT (or
   equivalently FETCH FIRST),
   and OFFSET clauses with a
   VALUES command.
  
expression
      A constant or expression to compute and insert at the indicated place
      in the resulting table (set of rows).  In a VALUES list
      appearing at the top level of an INSERT, an
      expression can be replaced
      by DEFAULT to indicate that the destination column's
      default value should be inserted.  DEFAULT cannot
      be used when VALUES appears in other contexts.
     
sort_expression
      An expression or integer constant indicating how to sort the result
      rows.  This expression can refer to the columns of the
      VALUES result as column1, column2,
      etc.  For more details see
      ORDER BY Clause.
     
operator
      A sorting operator.  For details see
      ORDER BY Clause.
     
count
      The maximum number of rows to return.  For details see
      LIMIT Clause.
     
start
      The number of rows to skip before starting to return rows.
      For details see
      LIMIT Clause.
     
   VALUES lists with very large numbers of rows should be avoided,
   as you might encounter out-of-memory failures or poor performance.
   VALUES appearing within INSERT is a special case
   (because the desired column types are known from the INSERT's
   target table, and need not be inferred by scanning the VALUES
   list), so it can handle larger lists than are practical in other contexts.
  
   A bare VALUES command:
VALUES (1, 'one'), (2, 'two'), (3, 'three');
This will return a table of two columns and three rows. It's effectively equivalent to:
SELECT 1 AS column1, 'one' AS column2 UNION ALL SELECT 2, 'two' UNION ALL SELECT 3, 'three';
   More usually, VALUES is used within a larger SQL command.
   The most common use is in INSERT:
INSERT INTO films (code, title, did, date_prod, kind)
    VALUES ('T_601', 'Yojimbo', 106, '1961-06-16', 'Drama');
   In the context of INSERT, entries of a VALUES list
   can be DEFAULT to indicate that the column default
   should be used here instead of specifying a value:
INSERT INTO films VALUES
    ('UA502', 'Bananas', 105, DEFAULT, 'Comedy', '82 minutes'),
    ('T_601', 'Yojimbo', 106, DEFAULT, 'Drama', DEFAULT);
   VALUES can also be used where a sub-SELECT might
   be written, for example in a FROM clause:
SELECT f.*
  FROM films f, (VALUES('MGM', 'Horror'), ('UA', 'Sci-Fi')) AS t (studio, kind)
  WHERE f.studio = t.studio AND f.kind = t.kind;
UPDATE employees SET salary = salary * v.increase
  FROM (VALUES(1, 200000, 1.2), (2, 400000, 1.4)) AS v (depno, target, increase)
  WHERE employees.depno = v.depno AND employees.sales >= v.target;
   Note that an AS clause is required when VALUES
   is used in a FROM clause, just as is true for
   SELECT.  It is not required that the AS clause
   specify names for all the columns, but it's good practice to do so.
   (The default column names for VALUES are column1,
   column2, etc in PostgreSQL, but
   these names might be different in other database systems.)
  
   When VALUES is used in INSERT, the values are all
   automatically coerced to the data type of the corresponding destination
   column.  When it's used in other contexts, it might be necessary to specify
   the correct data type.  If the entries are all quoted literal constants,
   coercing the first is sufficient to determine the assumed type for all:
SELECT * FROM machines
WHERE ip_address IN (VALUES('192.168.0.1'::inet), ('192.168.0.10'), ('192.168.1.43'));
    For simple IN tests, it's better to rely on the
    list-of-scalars
    form of IN than to write a VALUES
    query as shown above.  The list of scalars method requires less writing
    and is often more efficient.
   
VALUES conforms to the SQL standard.
   LIMIT and OFFSET are
   PostgreSQL extensions; see also
   under SELECT.