Creating a VIEW from multiple tables each with a different number of columns - asp.net

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

So in your UNION sql, either remove the extra columns from the sql for the table with too many, or add extra columns with constant default values to the sql for the table with fewer columns.
Based on your example output, adding extra constant values might look like this...
Select StoryID id, AlbumID,
StoryTitle name, AlbumCover, Votes
From Stories
UNION
Select AlbumID id, AlbumID,
AlbumName name, AlbumCover, Votes
From Albums
UNION
Select AlbumPictureID id, null AlbumId,
null AlbumCover, Votes
From pictures
Order By id, Votes, name
But this makes me want to ask WHY???
EDIT: To sort, just add an order by using output column names, as shown above....

Answer 2

In order to use a UNION or UNION ALL operator, the number of columns and datatypes of the columns returned by each query have to be the same.
One trick you can use is to return a NULL value for the columns that are "missing" from some of the queries.
For performance, I recommend you use the UNION ALL operator in place of the UNION operator, if removing duplicates is not a requirement.
Whenever I need to do something like this, I usually include a literal in each query, as an identifier of which query the row came from.
e.g.
SELECT 'a' AS source
, a.id AS id
, a.name AS name
FROM table_a a
UNION ALL
SELECT 'b' AS source
, b.id AS id
, NULL AS name
FROM table_b b
ORDER BY 1,2

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

I guess this makes little sense,
Select StoryID+'SID' id, AlbumID,
StoryTitle name, AlbumCover, Votes
From Stories
UNION
Select AlbumID+'AID' id, AlbumID,
AlbumName name, AlbumCover, Votes
From Albums
UNION
Select AlbumPictureID+'APID' id, null AlbumId,
null AlbumCover, Votes
From pictures
Concatenating 'SID','AID' and 'APID' and it will make some sense when you see UI data

Answer 5

select * from Stories as s
inner join Albums as a on a.AccountID = s.AccountID
inner join Pictures as p on p.AccountID = s.AccountID
will return all, as long as AccountID is defined in all 3 tables
To only obtain the unique columns change * for the columns you desire

Answer 6

Why on earth would you need the data to be all in the same view? Just return 3 sets of data. If for example you are using a web browser as the front end, you could perform three queries and return them as a single set of JSON, for example:
{
Albums: [
{AlbumID: 1, AlbumName: 'blah', ... },
{AlbumID: 2, AlbumName: 'gorp', ... }
],
AlbumPictures: [
{AlbumID: 1, URL: 'http://fun.jpg'},
{AlbumID: 1, URL: 'http://fun2.jpg'}
],
Stories [
{StoryID: 3, StoryTitle: 'Jack & Jill', ... },
{ etc. }
]
}
There is absolutely no programming architectural constraint forcing you to put everything together in a single view.