I’ve used Excel to generate numerous SELECT statements from a list of the schema names from a database with a large number of identical schemas:
select result from foo.table limit 1; select result from bar.table limit 1; select result from doo.table limit 1;
(foo, bar & doo are examples of my schemas, there are hundreds in reality).
Each SELECT will return only one result. I simply want one column result with as many rows as there are schemas. I can then copy this back into Excel against the schema names.
When I run the query above I get 1 row, with the others being discarded:
Query result with 1 row discarded. Query result with 1 row discarded. Total query runtime: 40 ms. 1 row retrieved.
I have tried using UNION ALL, but the limit 1 I am using to ensure one row only is returned from each schema table appears to prevent this from working.
How can I either prevent the other rows from being discarded, or write a query that will return the values I need (two columns – schema_name, result – one row for each schema) in a more efficient way?
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Answer
Wrap individual sub-statements in parenthesis to make the syntax unambiguous:
(SELECT result FROM tbl1 LIMIT 1) UNION ALL (SELECT result FROM tbl2 LIMIT 1)
The manual about UNION is very clear on the matter:
select_statementis anySELECTstatement without anORDER BY,LIMIT,FOR UPDATE, orFOR SHAREclause. (ORDER BYandLIMITcan be attached to a subexpression if it is enclosed in parentheses. Without parentheses, these clauses will be taken to apply to the result of theUNION, not to its right-hand input expression.)