Can you create nested WITH clauses for Common Table Expressions?

Question

WITH y AS (
    WITH x AS (
        SELECT * FROM MyTable
    )
    SELECT * FROM x
)
SELECT * FROM y

Does something like this work? I tried it ear

Answer 1

You can do the following, which is referred to as a recursive query:

WITH y
AS
(
  SELECT x, y, z
  FROM MyTable
  WHERE [base_condition]

  UNION ALL

  SELECT x, y, z
  FROM MyTable M
  INNER JOIN y ON M.[some_other_condition] = y.[some_other_condition]
)
SELECT *
FROM y

You may not need this functionality. I've done the following just to organize my queries better:

WITH y 
AS
(
  SELECT * 
  FROM MyTable
  WHERE [base_condition]
),
x
AS
(
  SELECT * 
  FROM y
  WHERE [something_else]
)
SELECT * 
FROM x