I prefer the syntax of recursive CTEs (as many others have mentioned). A simple use case that I have in my work is generating a date table, and a recursive CTE

I prefer the syntax of recursive CTEs (as many others have mentioned). A simple use case that I have in my work is generating a date table, and a recursive CTE sits at the core of this script: TSQL Syntax: WITH dateCTE (FullDate) AS (SELECT '20100101' UNION ALL SELECT DATEADD(DAY, 1, FullDate) FROM dateCTE WHERE FullDate < 20101231 ) In the example above, we generate a table of all dates in 2010. I don't get much chance to play with Postgres, but from their documentation[0] it seems the concept transfers over readily by using WITH RECURSIVE. [0]http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/queries-with.html http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/queries-with.html