Sql COALESCE entire rows?

Question

I just learned about COALESCE and I\'m wondering if it\'s possible to COALESCE an entire row of data between two tables? If not, what\'s the best approach to the following r

Answer 1

 SELECT Id, Name, Email, Etc FROM tbl_Employees
      WHERE Id IN (SELECT ID From tbl_PeopleInID)
 UNION ALL
 SELECT Id, Name, Email, Etc FROM tbl_Customers
      WHERE Id IN (SELECT ID From tbl_PeopleInID) AND
            Id NOT IN (SELECT Id FROM tbl_Employees)

Depending on the number of rows, there are several different ways to write these queries (with JOIN and EXISTS), but try this first.

This query first selects all the people from tbl_Employees that have an Id value in your target list (the table tbl_PeopleInID). It then adds to the "bottom" of this bunch of rows the results of the second query. The second query gets all tbl_Customer rows with Ids in your target list but excluding any with Ids that appear in tbl_Employees.

The total list contains the people you want — all Ids from tbl_PeopleInID with preference given to Employees but missing records pulled from Customers.