selecting from two tables, but not joining them..

[Anon]

for an "A-Z" index of a site, i need to select the titles from a number of tables (3, in fact) and alphabetise them. i want to use the sql server to do the hard work as a) it's faster, and b) it makes such things as limits and offsets much easier.

what i don't want to do is join the tables, because they're not (in this situation) related.

is there some way of temporarily catting them together and selecting on the lot?

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rad

[Anon]

If you just want to get one big listing of all titles from 3 tables you'll have to do three queries, one for each table;

[Anon]

Couldn't you generate a temporary table or is that too resource consuming?

[Anon]

Yes there is. Basically you do this:

select into temporary table test99 from table1;
insert into test99 select from table2;
insert into test99 select * from table3;

select * from test99 order by some_column;

Or you could use something like:

select into test99 from table1 union select from table2 union select * from table3;

[Anon]

thanks guys, i think i've got enough to go on.

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rad