The subquery comparison test (=, <>, <. <=, >, >=) is a modified version of the simple comparison test. The only difference between the two is that in the former, the expression following the operator is a subquery. This test is used to compare a value from a row in the main query to a single value produced by the subquery.

Example

This query contains an example of a subquery comparison test:

SELECT Name, Description, Quantity
FROM Products
WHERE Quantity <  2 * (
   SELECT AVG( Quantity )
   FROM SalesOrderItems );

The following subquery retrieves a single value—the average quantity of items of each type per customer's order—from the SalesOrderItems table.

SELECT AVG( Quantity )
FROM SalesOrderItems;

Then the main query compares the quantity of each in-stock item to that value.

A subquery in a comparison test returns one value

A subquery in a comparison test must return exactly one value. Consider this query, whose subquery extracts two columns from the SalesOrderItems table:

SELECT Name, Description, Quantity
FROM Products
WHERE Quantity <  2 * (
   SELECT AVG( Quantity ), MAX( Quantity )
   FROM SalesOrderItems);

It returns the error Subquery allowed only one select list item.