Structured Query Language/with clause

The  extends SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT or DELETE statements with the definition of one or more 'inline views'. The scope of such 'inline views' is limited to the actual statement. Hence they have a temporary nature. Their purpose is the rearrangement of complex statements in such a way that the intention of the complete statement gets more clearly represented. Primarily, it is a syntax element to support the maintenance of database applications. Secondarily, if complex statements contain identical phrases at different places, and they are rearranged by a single, the DBMS has a better chance to find an optimal execution strategy.

In other words: The  does not offer any new feature - with the exception of recursive queries, which will be explained in the next chapter. It offers only a syntax element to express complex queries in a clearly arranged way.

Hint: WITH clause is the terminology of the SQL standard. In everyday speech, this language construct is mostly referred to as Common Table Expression (CTE) and sometimes as Inline View. Oracle calls it Subquery Factoring Clause. Even though it is not the official term, on this page of the Wikibook, we prefer the term CTE as it is an expressive abbreviation.

Syntax
The keyword WITH introduces the definition of a CTE. First, the CTE gets an arbitrary name - 'cte_1' in our case. This is followed by a SELECT statement, which defines how to retrieve data from one or more tables into the CTE (please consider: it's only a definition - it is not necessary, that the data really is materialized in the CTE). Afterward, a normal SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT, or DELETE statement follows, where the previous defined name of the CTE is used directly in the FROM or at any other place, where view or table names are allowed.

Examples
The first example is limited to report only the content of a CTE. In this case it contains information about days where more than one person is born and consists of rows with the date plus a counter. The similarity between CTEs and views is obvious. The main difference is that view definitions keep alive after using the view name in a statement, whereas the scope of a CTE is limited to the statement, where it is defined. This is the reason why some people denote CTEs as Inline Views.

The second example uses the CTE within a SUBSELECT of the main SELECT. The CTE is further modified by a BETWEEN criterion.

The third example uses the CTE at different places within the statement. The main SELECT retrieves all persons (more than two rows), which have the same birthdays as such identified by the CTE (two rows). And it amends every person with the number of ambiguous birthdays (which is '2').

Extension
The  is the basis for recursive queries, which will be explained in the next chapter.