Union
"Take 2+ tables with equal number of columns and combine them into a single result set."
- ie. combines results of 2+ SELECTs into a single result set.
- "append" could have also been an appropriate name
UNION is conceptually opposite of JOIN; it expands the result set in the other direction (y instead of x)
- JOIN is for taking 2 tables and combining their columns, while UNION is for taking 2 tables and combining their rows(ie. records)
SELECT select_list_1
FROM table1
UNION
SELECT select_list_2
FROM table2
- The number and the order of the columns in the select list of both queries must be the same.
- The UNION operator by default removes all duplicate rows from the combined data set (
UNION ALL
will bring them back) - In practice, you often use the UNION operator to combine data from similar tables, which are not perfectly normalized
- ex. with 2 tables:
popular_movies
,top_rated_movies
, return the movies found in both tables, removing any duplicates along the way