THREE WAYS TO COMBINE DATA

Three Main Ways to Combine Data

Data in relational database tables are organized into rows and columns. As we
investigate ways to combine data, keep in mind that the result will be to either add more
columns to a result, perhaps from another relate table, or rows, by taking a set of rows
from two or more tables.

When most people learn to combine data, they learn about:

1. JOIN – You can use joins to combine columns from one or more queries into one
result.
2. UNION – Use Unions and other set operators to combine rows from one or more
queries into one result.
3. Sub Queries – Sometimes called nested queries, these can be used to perform a
separate search in the database showed results can be used in another query.

Use this guide as a map. It is meant to help you find other great resources at
www.essentialsql.com you can use to learn about joins, unions, and subqueries.

Joins
I like to think of joins as the glue that put the database back together. Relational
databases are usually normalized to make the data easier to maintain and to improve
performance, but the end result is information is
separated into many tables. You can use Joins to
recombine that information back together into a more
human readable format. The data is recombined by
matching columns from each table.
In all cases, joins require two main ingredients: Two tables and a join condition. The
tables are what we will use to pull the rows and columns and the join condition is how
we intend on matching the columns between tables.

Example JOIN
SELECT Person.FirstName,

Person.LastName,

PersonPhone.PhoneNumber

FROM Person.Person

INNER JOIN Person.PersonPhone

ON Person.BusinessEntityID =
PersonPhone.BusinessEntityID
There are two main types of joins. Inner Joins and Outer Joins.

Inner Joins only return a resulting row if the join condition matches in both
tables. Inner joins are mainly used to match the primary key of one table a foreign key
in another.

The second type of join is an outer join. Outer joins always return at least one row for
the main table, referred to as the Left or Right table, and null values in the
corresponding columns of the non-matching column. Outer joins are useful for finding
non-matching data.

It is important to note that joins can return more rows than exist in either table
combined. The joins return combinations of matches. If you join two tables, on
containing 5 row, and the other 10, the result may contain anywhere from 0 to 50 rows
depending on the join condition.
Unions
An UNION is used to combine the rows of two or more queries into one result. Union is
called a set operator.

There are some special conditions that must occur in

order for a union to work. First each query must have
the same number of columns. Second, the data types of
these columns must be compatible. Generally speaking,
each query must return the same number and type of
columns.

A practical example of union is when two tables contain part numbers and you want to
create a combine list for a catalogue. You can either elect to have the end result be a
unique listing for the combine query or if you use UNION ALL return all rows from each
table.

Example UNION
SELECT C.Name

FROM Production.ProductCategory AS C

UNION
SELECT S.Name
FROM Production.ProductSubcategory AS S
In addition to Union there are a couple of other handy set operators:

▪ INTERSECT – You can use this to only return row that are common between two
tables.
▪ EXCEPT – You can use this to return rows that exist on one table, but aren’t found
in another.
As you go on to learn more SQL you find that you can use joins to write equivalent
statements for Intersect, and Except, but there are no equivalents for Union.

Sub Queries
Sub queries are sometimes called nested queries. They are queries defined inside of
other queries. Sub queries can be confusing. I think a
lot of this stems for the fact they can be used in many
places in a SQL select statement, and for several
purposes!

For example, here are some areas you may see a sub
query:

▪ SELECT clause – Used to return a value. For instance, if you’re querying a sales
table, you could include the total sales by return a sum of all sales from within a sub
query.
▪ WHERE clause – Sub queries can be used in the where clause in comparisons. You
could set up a comparison to compare sales to the overall average. The overall
average would be returned from a sub query. You can also use sub queries in
membership operators such as IN. Rather than hard-coding the in clause you can
use a sub query to make it more dynamic.
▪ HAVING clause – A single value from a sub query is included in the HAVING clause
comparisons.
Example Sub query
SELECT SalesOrderID,

LineTotal,

(SELECT AVG(LineTotal)

FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail) AS AverageLineTotal

FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail

When used in select clauses and comparison operators such as equals, greater than, and
less than, a sub query can only return one row. If used in conjunction with a
membership operator, such as IN, it is OK for the query to return one or more rows.

Conclusion
I hope this brief introduction to Three Ways to Combine Data has served to take some
mystery out of the how SQL works. As always, my goals it to try to make it as easy as
possible for you to learn SQLServer.

Get even more help at www.essentialSQL.com or over at our Essential SQL Learning
Group on Facebook.