What is the dual table in Oracle?

dual-table, oracle

Solution

It's a sort of dummy table with a single record used for selecting when you're not actually interested in the data, but instead want the results of some system function in a select statement:

e.g. `select sysdate from dual;`

See http://www.adp-gmbh.ch/ora/misc/dual.html

As of 23c, Oracle supports `select sysdate /* or other value */`, without `from dual`, as has been supported in MySQL for some time already.

Problem

I've heard people referring to this table and was not sure what it was about.

Original source