Kenneth Fisher shows how to use the VALUES clause to construct a virtual table:
This has come up a few times recently, I find it rather fascinating and I can never seem to remember how to do it properly .. so in other words, it’s a perfect subject for a blog post.
Basically, you can use VALUES to create a table within a query. I’ve seen it done in a number of places. Mostly when demoing something and you want some data, but don’t want to actually create a table. I’ve also seen it used to create a numbers table, create test data, etc. Really, any case where you want a short list of values but don’t want to create an actual (or even temp) table to store them.
Click through for examples on how to construct and use this virtual table as a quick replacement for creating a temporary table or table variable.