Occasionally, SQL surprises with bits of composability, such as the fact that using VALUES to specify literal tuples can be used with both INSERT and the FROM c

Occasionally, SQL surprises with bits of composability, such as the fact that using VALUES to specify literal tuples can be used with both INSERT and the FROM clause of a SELECT. Is there any reason syntactically the SELECT needs to be required? If you use a VALUES table literal as a subselect, you have to give it column names with an AS clause (see https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-values.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-values.html). I can imagine a simpler syntax where you'd do WITH VALUES ... AS table_name (column_1_name, ...). Is there any reason to alias the lookup table as `codes`? There are apparently lots of other clever uses of the WITH clause, such as https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/queries-with.html#QUERIES-WITH-MODIFYING https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/queries-with.html#QU...