How to select several hardcoded SQL rows?

Question

If you execute this query

SELECT \'test-a1\' AS name1, \'test-a2\' AS name2

the result will be a one row-selection with two columns having

Answer 1

In MySQL you could use UNION like this:

SELECT * from 
    (SELECT 2006 AS year UNION
     SELECT 2007 AS year UNION
     SELECT 2008 AS year UNION
    ) AS years

Answer 2

I'd love to hear is anyone has a better solution. In the past I've used this:

Select top 3 'Hardcode'
from tableWithLotsOfRows

Would you mind switching abc, with 123?

select top 3 
    'test-A'+convert(varchar, row_number() over (order by PrimaryKey)),
    'test-B'+convert(varchar, row_number() over (order by PrimaryKey))
from tableWithLotsOfRows

that should return something like:

TestA1, Test-B1
TestA2, Test-B2
TestA3, Test-B3

Answer 3

As of MySQL 8.0.19, it is possible to do

SELECT
    column_0 AS name1,
    column_1 AS name2
FROM
    (VALUES
        ROW('test-a1','test-a2'),
        ROW('test-b1','test-b2'),
        ROW('test-c1','test-c2')
    ) AS hardcodedNames

Which returns

name1   name2
==================
test-a1 test-a2
test-b1 test-b2
test-c1 test-c2

A note on column names

The columns of the table output from VALUES have the implicitly named columns column_0, column_1, column_2, and so on, always beginning with 0.

Documentation here: https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/values.html.

Answer 4

Extending the answer of @openshac for oracle, as the below mentioned code works for oracle:

SELECT 'test-a1' AS name1, 'test-a2' AS name2 from dual 
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'test-b1', 'test-b2' from dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'test-c1', 'test-c2' from dual

Answer 5

UNION ALL is the best bet. It's faster than UNION and you will have mutually exclusive rows.

Answer 6

SELECT 'test-a1' AS name1, 'test-a2' AS name2 
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'test-b1', 'test-b2'
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'test-c1', 'test-c2'