Quick Lookups with VALUES as a Table

Ever need to map codes to labels without creating a whole new table? In YugabyteDB, you can use the SQL VALUES clause like a temporary, inline table, making your queries cleaner and more self-contained.

Example:

Suppose you have an orders table like this:

				
					CREATE TABLE orders (
  id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
  status_code INT
);

INSERT INTO orders (status_code)
VALUES (1), (2), (3), (2), (1);

Now you want to map those numeric status codes to human-friendly labels like:

1 → ‘Pending’
2 → ‘Shipped’
3 → ‘Delivered’

Solution Using VALUES as a Table:

				
					SELECT o.id, o.status_code, s.label AS status_label
FROM orders o
JOIN (
  VALUES
    (1, 'Pending'),
    (2, 'Shipped'),
    (3, 'Delivered')
) AS s(code, label)
ON o.status_code = s.code;

Runing the SELECT:

				
					yugabyte=# SELECT o.id, o.status_code, s.label AS status_label
yugabyte-# FROM orders o
yugabyte-# JOIN (
yugabyte(#   VALUES
yugabyte(#     (1, 'Pending'),
yugabyte(#     (2, 'Shipped'),
yugabyte(#     (3, 'Delivered')
yugabyte(# ) AS s(code, label)
yugabyte-# ON o.status_code = s.code;
 id | status_code | status_label
----+-------------+--------------
  5 |           1 | Pending
  1 |           1 | Pending
  4 |           2 | Shipped
  2 |           2 | Shipped
  3 |           3 | Delivered
(5 rows)

Why it’s cool:

You don’t need a permanent lookup table.
Great for small, static mappings or ad-hoc transformations.
Makes queries more self-contained (no external joins or dependencies).

Whether you’re doing quick reporting, lightweight ETL, or testing logic inline, VALUES tables are a powerful to add to your SQL toolkit.

Have Fun!