Understanding UNION and UNION ALL in SQL Server
A short look at the differences in UNION and UNION ALL in a SELECT query.
2025-04-07
4,354 reads
UNION
UNION vs. UNION ALL in SQL Server
Sometimes there is a need to combine data from multiple tables or views into one comprehensive dataset. This may be for like tables within the same database or maybe there is a need to combine like data across databases or even across servers. I have read about the UNION and UNION ALL commands, but how do these work and how do they differ?
2019-12-05
2018-06-12
1,065 reads
2016-11-15
1,315 reads
2016-05-31
1,596 reads
Union Forcing Distinct
The use of union would seem to force a distinct in each of the select statements being unioned. The use multiple unions, with mixed union and union all clauses, seems to cause haphazard results.
2013-05-14 (first published: 2013-04-30)
932 reads
2012-03-08
2,816 reads
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Question of the Day
Fun with JSON I
I have some data in a table:
CREATE TABLE #test_data
(
id INT PRIMARY KEY,
name VARCHAR(100),
birth_date DATE
);
-- Step 2: Insert rows
INSERT INTO #test_data
VALUES
(1, 'Olivia', '2025-01-05'),
(2, 'Emma', '2025-03-02'),
(3, 'Liam', '2025-11-15'),
(4, 'Noah', '2025-12-22');
If I run this query, how many rows are returned?
SELECT *
FROM OPENJSON(
(
SELECT t.* FROM #test_data AS t FOR JSON PATH
)
) t; See possible answers