UNION
joins two results and remove duplicates, while UNION ALL
does not remove duplicates.
UNION
also sort the final output.
W
"UNION also sort the final output" - only as an implementation artifact. It is by no means guaranteed to perform the sort, and if you need a particular sort order, you should specify it with an ORDER BY
clause. Otherwise, the output order is whatever is most convenient for the server to provide.
As such, your request for a function that performs a UNION ALL
but that removes duplicates is easy - it's called UNION
.
From your clarification, you also appear to believe that a UNION ALL
will return all of the results from the first query before the results of the subsequent queries. This is also not guaranteed. Again, the only way to achieve a particular order is to specify it using an ORDER BY
clause.