What is Common Table Expression (CTE)? A common table expression (CTE) is a temporary storage result set, which will be accessible within the next execution scope of a query. That means we didn’t get CTE result after the second query statement. A CTE is similar to a derived table in that it is not stored as an object and lasts only for the duration of the query. Unlike a derived table, a CTE can be self-referencing and can be referenced multiple times in the same query.