Union and Union ALL

Question

Hi Ques What is the differences between Union and Union ALL ?

Senthilkumar · Answer

The UNION and UNION ALL is used to join the tables. UNION The UNION command is used to select related information from two tables much like the JOIN command. However when using the UNION command all selected columns need to be of the same data type. With UNION only distinct values are selected. UNION ALL The UNION ALL command is equal to the UNION command except that UNION ALL selects all values. The difference between Union and Union all is that Union all will not eliminate duplicate rows instead it just pulls all rows from all tables fitting your query specifics and combines them into a table. A UNION statement effectively does a SELECT DISTINCT on the results set. If you know that all the records returned are unique from your union use UNION ALL instead it gives faster results. The UNION ALL is best in performance wise because it will combine the rows in the both table. Its stright farward process in the sql server engine. Where UNION has to perform the DISTINCT operation from the union all results. I suggest to to visit this url: http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2009/03/11/sql-server-difference-between-union-vs-union-all-optimal-performance-comparison/