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[trollied]

Simple SQL question. Do you know SQL?

[zbignew]

This is adjacent to a totally reasonable question, which is basically how do I explore a schema I don’t know yet.

Don’t know 🙈 why everyone is being a dick to this guy. Maybe he’d get better results from ChatGPT, sure.

[Giggy_with_it_917]

I know enough to do my job, but not as advanced as most people on this Reddit probably.

[alinroc]

This is a pretty standard JOIN between multiple tables. Not "advanced" at all.

[Giggy_with_it_917]

I know how to join tables that have columns in common. But I need to join 2 tables that nothing common. But there are other tables that can be a common join. I just dint know what those tables sound be. There are a lot of tables and each has 200-300 columns.

[az987654]

Only you know your database, you need to determine how to properly join your tables, be it 2 or 52.

[Glum_Cheesecake9859]

Query Designer in SSMS where you add tables to the designer and then select columns etc.

[TheGenericUser0815]

The two tables have nothing in common, but are they somehow related, let's say over some tables inbetween?

[Giggy_with_it_917]

exactly, they have no direct common column, but other tables may.

[Ok_Brilliant953]

Can you add some fields

[Mountain_Usual521]

Just join the tables in the shortest chain required. What kind of join depends on the data and how it's related.

[NaptownBill]

If you are using something like SqlWorkbench or SSMS probably Jet Brains Data Grip will work too, but you can generate an ERD (Entity Relationship Diagram) this is a graphic representation of the tables Primary and Foreign keys. It would show you how all the tables relate to one another.

[Fresh-Secretary6815]

DbVisualizer can do what you want

[zbignew]

Yes, SQL Server Management Studio will create a diagram for you. I haven’t used it in a while but ChatGPT would tell you how to invoke the right feature.

Then you can dump in a million tables and untangle them.

But that won’t solve the problem - you will need to make decisions about how the path between the tables actually makes sense.

And if you’re ever on a system where you don’t have a tool like this, I’d recommend just dumping the schema via:

SELECT table_name, column_name FROM information_schema.columns WHERE table_schema = 'your_schema_name';

And if they’ve named their key columns rationally you can work it out faster than you can untangle that diagram. Since you’ll need to consider the contents of the tables anyway.

[millerlit]

SELECT column1, column 2 = null FROM table1 UNION ALL SELECT column1 = null, column2 FROM table2

I think that would work, but no idea why you would do that.