How to select data from non-table in Firebird?

Question

I'm searching for the Firebird equivalent of:

SELECT 'abc' AS abc, 123 AS def, '20110101' AS dt

Whenever I do

SELECT 'whatever' as xxx 

I get an error message.

Answer 1

Firebird, like Oracle, requires a table for a SELECT.

Usually, RDB$DATABASE is used for this purpose:

SELECT  'abc' AS abc, 123 AS def, '20110101' AS dt
FROM    RDB$DATABASE