[thelist] MySQL Query problem: unique vals from two fields

Matt Warden mwarden at gmail.com
Wed Nov 22 13:02:47 CST 2006


On 11/22/06, Pringle, Ron <RPringle at aurora-il.org> wrote:
> To close this out, turns out you don't need to use DISTINCT in the
> query. The default behavior of UNION in MySQL is to remove duplicate
> rows anyhow. So the final query now looks like:

To clarify, you are saying that for a unioned set A and B, where A
and/or B have duplicates within its own set, the union operation will
remove such duplicates? So, it must combine sets and then perform the
un-dupe over the entire set, rather than take set A and only append
from set B if the item in set B is not found in A.

Did you do any tests to make sure the DB does not use a different
algorithm when it knows the two sets have no dupes already?

-- 
Matt Warden
Cleveland, OH, USA
http://mattwarden.com


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