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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:

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, 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

-- ACCESS, ASE, AURORA_MYSQL, BIGQUERY, DERBY, DUCKDB, EXASOL, H2, HANA, HSQLDB, INFORMIX, MARIADB, MEMSQL, REDSHIFT, 
-- SQLITE, TERADATA, VERTICA
/* UNSUPPORTED */

(These are currently generated with jOOQ 3.19, see #10141), or translate your own on our website

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