How to join two tables together with same number of rows by their order

Question

I am using SQL2000 and I would like to join two table together based on their positions

For example consider the following 2 tables:

table1
-------
name
-         


        

Answer 1

Do you have anything that guarantees ordering of each table?

As far ax I know, SQL server does not make any promise on the ordering of a resultset unless the outer query has an order by clause. In your case you need Each table to be ordered in a deterministic manner for this to work.

Other than that, in SQL 2000, as answered before me, a temp table and two cursors seem like a good answer.

Update: Someone mentioned inserting both tables into temp tables, and that it would yield better performance. I am no SQL expert so I defer to those who know on that front, and since I had an up-vote I thought you should investigate those performance considerations. But in any case, if you do not have any other information in your tables than what you showed us I'm not sure you can pull it off, ordering-wise.

Answer 2

If your tables aren't two large, you could create two temp tables in memory and select your content into them in a specific order, and then join them on the row Number.

e.g.

CREATE TABLE #Temp_One (
    [RowNum] [int] IDENTITY (1, 1) NOT NULL ,
    [Description] [nvarchar] (50) NOT NULL
)

CREATE TABLE #Temp_Two (
    [RowNum] [int] IDENTITY (1, 1) NOT NULL ,
    [Description] [nvarchar] (50) NOT NULL
)

INSERT INTO #Temp_One
SELECT Your_Column FROM Your_Table_One ORDER BY Whatever

INSERT INTO #Temp_Two
SELECT Your_Column FROM Your_Table_Two ORDER BY Whatever

SELECT * 
FROM #Temp_One a 
    LEFT OUTER JOIN #Temp_Two b 
         On a.RowNum = b.RowNum

Answer 3

would be best to use row_number(), but that is only for 2005 and 2008, this should work for 2000...

Try this:

create table table1 (name varchar(30))
insert into table1 (name) values ('cat')
insert into table1 (name) values ('dog')
insert into table1 (name) values ('mouse')

create table table2 (cost int)
insert into table2 (cost) values (23)
insert into table2 (cost) values (13)
insert into table2 (cost) values (25)

Select IDENTITY(int,1,1) AS RowNumber
, Name
INTO #Temp1
from table1


Select IDENTITY(int,1,1) AS RowNumber
, Cost
INTO #Temp2
from table2

select * from #Temp1
select * from #Temp2

SELECT
    t1.Name, t2.Cost
    FROM #Temp1                 t1
        LEFT OUTER JOIN #Temp2  t2 ON t1.RowNumber=t2.RowNumber
    ORDER BY t1.RowNumber