Recursive CTEs

Hierarchies and graph walks with cycle guards. Production-oriented PostgreSQL guidance.

Recipe

WITH RECURSIVE tree AS (
  SELECT id, parent_id, 1 AS depth FROM app.nodes WHERE parent_id IS NULL
  UNION ALL
  SELECT n.id, n.parent_id, t.depth + 1 FROM app.nodes n JOIN tree t ON n.parent_id = t.id
)
SELECT * FROM tree;

When to reach for this: You implement or review SQL using this concept in PostgreSQL 18.

Working Example

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS app.nodes (id int PRIMARY KEY, parent_id int REFERENCES app.nodes(id));

What this demonstrates:

• Idiomatic PostgreSQL 18 SQL
• Patterns suitable for EXPLAIN review
• Safe defaults for OLTP workloads

Deep Dive

Mechanism

• Parser builds query tree.
• Executor runs plan nodes.
• MVCC provides snapshot isolation per statement or transaction.

Practice

• Keep examples readable.
• Test at realistic row counts.

Gotchas

• Long transactions - Block vacuum and increase bloat.. Fix: Commit quickly; set timeouts.
• Missing indexes - Seq scans under load.. Fix: Index join and filter columns.
• Implicit locks - Surprise blocking.. Fix: Use explicit FOR UPDATE when needed.
• Wrong isolation assumption - Anomalies under concurrent writes.. Fix: Pick level deliberately.
• Untested migrations - DDL lock or invalid objects.. Fix: Stage migrations with production-like data.

Alternatives

FAQs

Related

• Advanced SQL Basics - overview

Stack versions: This page was written for PostgreSQL 18.4 (stable 18, maintenance 17), pgvector 0.8+, PgBouncer 1.x, Patroni 3.x, and PostGIS 3.5+.