The SET statement can modify one of the
session setting variables. These can also be queried via SHOW.
SET statements are lost. It is therefore more reliable to configure the session in the client's connection string. For examples in different languages, see the Build an App with CockroachDB tutorials.Required Privileges
No privileges are required to modify the session settings.
Synopsis
General syntax:
SET statement for session settings is unrelated to the other SET TRANSACTION and SET CLUSTER SETTING statements.Parameters
The SET <session variable> statement accepts two parameters: the
variable name and the value to use to modify the variable.
The variable name is case insensitive. The value can be a list of one or more items. For example, the variable search_path is multi-valued.
Supported Variables
| Variable name | Description | Initial value | Can be viewed with SHOW? |
|---|---|---|---|
application_name |
The current application name for statistics collection. | Empty string. | Yes |
database |
The default database for the current session. | Database in connection string, or empty if not specified. | Yes |
search_path |
A list of databases or namespaces that will be searched to resolve unqualified table or function names. For more details, see Name Resolution. | "{pg_catalog}" (for ORM compatibility). |
Yes |
time zone |
The default time zone for the current session. See SET TIME ZONE notes below. |
UTC |
Yes |
default_transaction_isolation |
The default transaction isolation level for the current session. See Transaction parameters and SET TRANSACTION for more details. |
Settings in connection string, or "SERIALIZABLE" if not specified. |
Yes |
client_encoding |
Ignored; recognized for compatibility with PostgreSQL clients. Only possible value is "UTF8". |
N/A | No |
client_min_messages |
Ignored; recognized for compatibility with PostgreSQL clients. Only possible value is "on". |
N/A | No |
standard_conforming_strings |
Ignored; recognized for compatibility with PostgreSQL clients. | N/A | No |
extra_float_digits |
Ignored; recognized for compatibility with PostgreSQL clients. | N/A | No |
Special syntax cases:
| Syntax | Equivalent to |
|---|---|
SET SESSION CHARACTERISTICS AS TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL ... |
SET default_transaction_isolation = ... |
SET TIME ZONE ... |
Special syntax because the variable name contains a space. See SET TIME ZONE below. |
Examples
Set Simple Variables
The following demonstrates how SET can be used to configure the
default database for the current session:
> SET database = bank;
> SHOW database;
+----------+
| database |
+----------+
| bank |
+----------+
(1 row)
Set Variables to Values Containing Spaces
The following demonstrates how to use quoting to use values containing spaces:
> SET database = "database name with spaces";
> SHOW database;
+---------------------------+
| database |
+---------------------------+
| database name with spaces |
+---------------------------+
(1 row)
Set Variables to a List of Values
The following demonstrates how to assign a list of values:
> SET search_path = mydb, otherdb;
> SHOW search_path;
+---------------------------+
| search_path |
+---------------------------+
| pg_catalog, mydb, otherdb |
+---------------------------+
(1 row)
SET TIME ZONE
You can control your client's default time zone for the current session with SET TIME ZONE. This will apply a session offset to all TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE values.
SET TIME ZONE, CockroachDB uses UTC as the default time zone.SET TIME ZONE uses a special syntax form used to configure the "time zone" session parameter because SET cannot assign to parameter names containing spaces.
Parameters
The time zone value indicates the time zone for the current session.
This value can be a string representation of a local system-defined
time zone (e.g., 'EST', 'America/New_York') or a positive or
negative numeric offset from UTC (e.g., -7, +7). Also, DEFAULT,
LOCAL, or 0 sets the session time zone to UTC.
Example: Set the Default Time Zone via SET TIME ZONE
> SET TIME ZONE 'EST';
> SHOW TIME ZONE;
+-----------+
| time zone |
+-----------+
| EST |
+-----------+
(1 row)
> SET TIME ZONE DEFAULT;
> SHOW TIME ZONE;
+-----------+
| time zone |
+-----------+
| UTC |
+-----------+
(1 row)
See Also
SET TRANSACTIONSET CLUSTER SETTINGSHOW(session variable)- The
TIMESTAMPandTIMESTAMPTZdata types.
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