
Recursion is a way of solving hierarchical problems we find in data with common SQL. These types of queries are also called hierarchical queries. We can find recursion capability in standard SQL since SQL:1999 by way of recursive CTE's or common table expressions.
Full Answer
What is the recursive stored procedure in SQL Server?
Recursive Stored Procedures. A stored procedure can call itself up to the maximum nesting level of 32. This is referred to as recursion. When might you want a stored procedure to be recursive? One common example is when you need to expand a tree relationship.
What is a recursive CTE in SQL?
- The recursive CTEs are defined using WITH RECURSIVE clause.
- There should be a terminating condition to recursive CTE.
- The recursive CTEs are used for series generation and traversal of hierarchical or tree-structured data.
What is recursion in SQL?
Recursive SQL queries
- Recursion. Recursion is the technique in which a function calls itself from within its own body. ...
- Common Table Expression. It is possible to achieve a recursion within a SQL query. This is possible with the help of a CTE (common table expression).
- Example. Let’s visualize the technique with a concrete example. ...
How to join two CTE in SQL?
Multiple CTE need to be separate by “,” comma fallowed by CTE name. We will be using above same date range example to use more than one CTE query, here we can see as we have created two CTE query as CTE1 and CTE 2 to display date range result for both CTE1 and for CTE2. Example :

What is recursive function in SQL?
Recursion is a way of solving hierarchical problems we find in data with common SQL. These types of queries are also called hierarchical queries. We can find recursion capability in standard SQL since SQL:1999 by way of recursive CTE's or common table expressions.
What is a recursive database?
A recursive association connects a single class type (serving in one role) to itself (serving in another role). Example: In most companies, each employee (except the CEO) is supervised by one manager. Of course, not all employees are managers.
What is recursive SQL Server?
A recursive common table expression (CTE) is a CTE that references itself. By doing so, the CTE repeatedly executes, returns subsets of data, until it returns the complete result set.
How does recursive query work in SQL?
Recursion occurs because of the query referencing the CTE itself based on the Employee in the Managers CTE as input. The join then returns the employees who have their managers as the previous record returned by the recursive query. The recursive query is repeated until it returns an empty result set.
What is recursive query example?
A recursive query is one that is defined by a Union All with an initialization fullselect that seeds the recursion. The iterative fullselect contains a direct reference to itself in the FROM clause.
What is recursion example?
Recursion is the process of defining a problem (or the solution to a problem) in terms of (a simpler version of) itself. For example, we can define the operation "find your way home" as: If you are at home, stop moving. Take one step toward home.
What is recursive subquery in SQL?
A recursive subquery factoring clause must contain two query blocks combined by a UNION ALL set operator. The first block is known as the anchor member, which can not reference the query name. It can be made up of one or more query blocks combined by the UNION ALL, UNION, INTERSECT or MINUS set operators.
What is iterative and recursive query?
A recursive DNS lookup is where one DNS server communicates with several other DNS servers to hunt down an IP address and return it to the client. This is in contrast to an iterative DNS query, where the client communicates directly with each DNS server involved in the lookup.
How do you achieve recursive queries in SQL Server?
Recursion is achieved by WITH statement, in SQL jargon called Common Table Expression (CTE). It allows to name the result and reference it within other queries sometime later.
What is recursive MySQL?
A recursive CTE is a subquery which refer to itself using its own name. The recursive CTEs are defined using WITH RECURSIVE clause. There should be a terminating condition to recursive CTE. The recursive CTEs are used for series generation and traversal of hierarchical or tree-structured data.
How do you write a recursive function in MySQL?
MySQL does not allow recursive FUNCTIONs, even if you set max_sp_recursion_depth. It does allow up to 255 recursion in a PROCEDURE if you set max_sp_recursion_depth. So I recommend that you replace your function with a procedure, using an INOUT variable for the return_path. Show activity on this post.
Can you loop in SQL?
In SQL Server, a loop is the technique where a set of SQL statements are executed repeatedly until a condition is met. SQL Server supports the WHILE loop. The execution of the statements can be controlled from within the WHLE block using BREAK and CONTINUE keywords.
What is recursive relationship in DBMS give an example?
DBMS in Simple Steps An employee can supervise multiple employees. Hence, this is a recursive relationship of entity employee with itself. This is a 1 to many recursive relationship as one employee supervises many employees. A person can have many children who are also persons.
What is recursion in programming?
In computer science, recursion is a programming technique using function or algorithm that calls itself one or more times until a specified condition is met at which time the rest of each repetition is processed from the last one called to the first.
What is recursive SQL Oracle?
When you issue a data definition language (DDL) statement, Oracle Database implicitly issues recursive SQL statements that modify data dictionary information. Users need not be concerned with the recursive SQL internally performed by Oracle Database. Previous.
When a relationship set is called a recursive relationship?
A unary relationship, also called recursive, is one in which a relationship exists between occurrences of the same entity set. In this relationship, the primary and foreign keys are the same, but they represent two entities with different roles. See Figure 8.9 for an example.
What is recursive SQL?
If you are a SQL programmer, learning recursive SQL techniques can be a boon to your productivity. A recursive query is one that refers to itself. I think the best way to quickly grasp the concept of recursion is to think about a mirror that is reflected into another mirror and when you look into it you get never-ending reflections of yourself.
Can there be many CTEs in a single SQL statement?
There can be many CTEs in a single SQL statement but each must have a unique name. A CTE is defined at the beginning of a query using the WITH clause. Now before we dive into recursion, let’s first look at some data that would benefit from being read recursively. Figure 1 shows a hierarchic organization chart.
Is recursive SQL efficient?
Recursive SQL can be very elegant and efficient. However, because of the difficulty developers can have understanding recursion, it is sometimes thought of as “too inefficient to use frequently.”. But, if you have a business need to walk or explode hierarchies in your database, recursive SQL will likely be your most efficient option.
What does recursive mean in SQL?
What makes things recursive is that the CTE named t references itself inside the expression. To produce the result of the expression, the query engine must therefore recursively build the result, where each evaluation triggers the next. It reaches this point: SELECT n+1 FROM t... and has to stop and evaluate t. To do that, it has to call itself again, and so on, until the condition ( n < 100) no longer holds. The SELECT 1 provides a starting point, and the WHERE n < 100 makes it so that the query does not recur forever.
Is SQL recursion iteration?
The syntax that you are using looks like Postgres. "Recursion" in SQL is not really recursion, it is iteration. Your statement is:
What is a recursive CTE?
A recursive CTE references itself. It returns the result subset, then it repeatedly (recursively) references itself, and stops when it returns all the results.
How to connect anchor member to recursive member?
To connect the anchor member with the recursive member, you need to use the UNION or UNION ALL command. The recursive member is, obviously, the recursive part of CTE that will reference the CTE itself. You’ll see how it works in an example very soon.
What does the first select statement do?
The first SELECT statement selects all the employee table columns where the column boss_id is NULL. In short, it will select Roxanna Fairlie, because only she has a NULL value in that column. Even shorter: I’m starting the recursion from the top of the organizational structure. There’s also a column hierarchy_level with the value of 0. That means the owner/president’s level is 0 – they're on top of the hierarchy.
What is a recursive table expression?
A recursive common table expression (CTE) is a CTE that references itself. By doing so, the CTE repeatedly executes, returns subsets of data, until it returns the complete result set. A recursive CTE is useful in querying hierarchical data such as organization charts where one employee reports to a manager or multi-level bill ...
When does the recursive member return?
The recursive member returns the next day starting from the Tuesdaytill Sunday.
How to execute a recursive CTE?
The execution order of a recursive CTE is as follows: 1 First, execute the anchor member to form the base result set (R0), use this result for the next iteration. 2 Second, execute the recursive member with the input result set from the previous iteration (Ri-1) and return a sub-result set (Ri) until the termination condition is met. 3 Third, combine all result sets R0, R1, … Rn using UNION ALL operator to produce the final result set.
What is a recursive CTE?
In general, a recursive CTE has three parts: An initial query that returns the base result set of the CTE. The initial query is called an anchor member. A recursive query that references the common table expression, therefore, it is called the recursive member. The recursive member is union-ed with the anchor member using the UNION ALL operator.
How many parts are there in a recursive CTE?
In general, a recursive CTE has three parts:
PostgreSQL – recursive WITH clause
In order to render such a menu, we need to know the full URL path of each button, information about the level of the node (to appropriately style it in CSS) and where to attach it (it’s parent’s ID of course). So let’s start to build our select query with CTE:
Oracle – hierarchical queries
In Oracle you can use either the hierarchical query clause (also known as “CONNECT BY query”) or recursive subquery factoring (introduced in version 11g release 2).

What Are CTEs?
- The CTE (common table expression), also known as the WITHclause, is an SQL feature that returns a temporary data set that can be used by another query. As it’s a temporary result, it’s not stored anywhere, but it still can be referenced like you would reference any other table. There are two types of CTEs, non-recursive and recursive. Here’s a nice...
Example 1 – Finding Bosses and Hierarchical Level For All Employees
- For this problem, I’ll use data from the table employees, which has the following columns: 1. id: The employee’s ID. 2. first_name: The employee’s first name. 3. last_name: The employee’s last name. 4. boss_id: The employee boss’s ID. Here’s what the data looks like: It’s not too complicated. For example, Domenic Leaver’s boss is the employee with the ID of 5; that’s Hermi…
Example 2 – Finding The Investment Amount by Investor
- In this example, I’ll use the table investment: 1. id: The investment’s ID. 2. investment_amount: The investment’s amount. The data in the table looks like this: These are the amounts of the three possible investment options. They will be considered by the three investors, who will divide the total investment amount in equal shares. Your task is to calculate the amount per investor depe…
Example 3 – Finding Routes Between Cities
- In the third example, I’ll be using the table cities_route, which contains data about Dutch cities: 1. city_from: The departure city. 2. city_to: The destination city. 3. distance: The distance between two cities, in kilometers. Use this table to find all the possible routes from Groningen to Haarlem, showing the cities on the route and the total distance. Here’s the query to solve this problem: Let…
Continue Practicing Recursive Ctes
- These three examples have demonstrated the possibilities of recursive CTEs in SQL. Now it’s time to build on what you learned here. Probably the best option is having a go at our Recursive Queries course. It offers you plenty of examples, explanations, and practice opportunities. The course is part of the Advanced SQL course track, where you can learn about other advanced SQL topics lik…