Searching Two Tables Without A Join

[jluciani]

I have two tables: articles and businesses. They do not share any columns that I can join them on. However, I want to search both of them at the same time from a single text input form. Is this possible with a single query?

Thanks Much.

[r937]

yes, sort of

you have to select the same number of compatible columns from each table

select 'article '   as source
     , aid          as pkey
     , title        as descr
  from articles
 where title like '%searchterm%'
union all 
select 'business' 
     , bus_no
     , bus_name
  from businesses
 where bus_name like '%searchterm%'

[jluciani]

Thank you very much for the reply. I'm new to the union syntax. I tried using:

SELECT  'article_body ' AS source, article_id AS pkey, article_title AS descr
FROM articles
WHERE article_title
LIKE  '%searchterm%'
UNION  ALL 
SELECT  'name', bus_id
FROM businesses
WHERE name
LIKE  '%searchterm%'
LIMIT 0 , 30

but I'm getting an error near "Union All". Could you explain what is supposed be in the single quote after the SELECT?

Thank you.

[r937]

what database? no, wait, let me guess, mysql

what version? for UNIONs, you need to be on at least 4.0 (the release prior to the current release)

also, you need to have the same number of columns in each of the SELECTs