UNION outer joins

[BiggerBrother]

I know this returns all the records in a field, and that it is the longest way to return these records, but it is the product of 2 built statements, so there is reason behind the madness.
(

SELECT DISTINCT contact. *
FROM contact
LEFT OUTER JOIN location ON ind_id = loc_indid
WHERE loc_id IS NULL
)
UNION (

SELECT DISTINCT contact. *
FROM contact
LEFT OUTER JOIN location ON ind_id = loc_indid
WHERE loc_id IS NOT NULL
)

Bascially, the first statement selects all entries in contact which do not appear in location, and the second does the reverse.

At the moment, the two statements work independantly, but once I add the UNION statemnet, it returns an error in the string after UNION. Where am I going wrong??

BB

 

[TonyGroves]

Can't see anything wrong there. What error message do you get?

 

[BiggerBrother]

Helpfully, it's just the standard:

You have an error in your SQL syntax near '( SELECT DISTINCT contact. * FROM contact LEFT OUTER JOIN location ON ind_i' at line 1

BB

 

[r937]

that error message indicates you are on a prehistoric version of mysql

i'm curious what the reason behind the madness is

what's wrong with SELECT * from contact ?



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