Question

I want to combine multiple tables into one VIEW.
My understanding is that if the number of columns are different we cannot use UNION.
How do I solve this?

I have the following three TABLES:

1.Table Name- Albums

2.Table Name-AlbumPictures

3.Table Name-Stories

I want to have 3 tables as follows:(i can do this part using INNER JOINS- kindly correct me if i am wrong)

For Stories: StoryID,AlbumID,StoryTitle,AlbumCover,Votes

For Albums: AlbumID,AlbumName,AlbumCover,Votes

For Pictures: AlbumPictureID,Votes

I want to merge all the rows retrieved from the above queries into one VIEWand shuffle them. As the number of columns are different in each of the result sets above am I able to combine them into one VIEW?

Answer 1

You can do something like this. All three tables are given similar columns with null values and TableName column is to identify the table which brings the data

EDIT: I have to say, this is not the right approach. I wanted to show you how to union tables but I think now it is getting ugly when editing it according to your comments.

--Note: Vote is on all three table, I have selected from Stories
select s.storyId, a.albumId, s.storyTitle, null albumName, 
       ap.albumCover, s.votes , null albumPictureId, 'stories-albums-albumPics' tableName
from Stories s join Albums a on s.albumId = a.albumId 
               join AlbumPictures ap on a.albumid = ap.albumId

UNION ALL 
select null storyId, a.albumID, null storyTitle, a.albumName,
       ap.albumCover, a.votes, null albumPictureId, 'albums-albumPics' tableName
from Albums a join AlbumPictures ap on a.albumid = ap.albumId

UNION ALL --use required table here as well  
select null storyId, null albumId, null storyTitle, null albumName, 
       null albumCover, votes, albumPictureId, 'pictures' tableName 
from Pictures