Subqueries in Search Conditions

A subquery is a SELECT statement enclosed in parentheses. Such a SELECT statement must contain one and only one select list item.

A column can be compared to a subquery in a comparison condition (for example, >,<, orĀ !=) as long as the subquery returns no more than one row. If the subquery (which must have one column) returns one row, the value of that row is compared to the expression. If a subquery returns no rows, its value is NULL.

Subqueries that return exactly one column and any number of rows can be used in IN conditions, ANY conditions, ALL conditions, or EXISTS conditions. These conditions are discussed in the following sections.

Sybase IQ supports UNION only in uncorrelated subquery predicates, not in scalar value subqueries or correlated subquery predicates.

Subqueries cannot be used inside a CONTAINS or LIKE predicate.

Sybase IQ does not support multiple subqueries in a single OR clause. For example, the following query has two subqueries joined by an OR:
CREATE VARIABLE @ln int;SELECT @ln = 1;select count(*) FROM lineitemWHERE l_shipdate IN (select l_shipdate FROM lineitem WHERE l_orderkey IN (2,4,6))OR l_shipdate IN (select l_shipdate FROM lineitem WHERE l_orderkey IN (1,3,5))OR l_linenumber = @ln;

Similar subqueries joined by AND and BETWEEN are allowed.

Related concepts
Column Names in Expressions
Related reference
Reserved Words
Identifiers
Comparison Conditions
Expressions
NULL Value
Search Conditions
Strings
Three-Valued Logic