Append Multiple Tables to Temp Table

Hi doddwell,

Why do you have 7 PO tables?

Regards,

Patrick

We are an umbrella company.  'Inside' the umbrella there are 7 separate companies.  I thought about putting all of the POs into one table when I designed the system but thought that this would not give me consequtive PO numbers for each company.  In retrospect perhaps I should have looked into this further and found a way of creating PO numbers with a suffix.  But it's too late now!

I'm usong Stored Procedures.  How would you have achieved unique company specific consequtive numbers within the same table?

I have managed to merge the contents of all of the tables using a view (vwAllPOs) which uses Union All.  I then execute an SP which is a Select of vwAllPOs Inner Joined to another table.  This works for me - so now I'm even more confused about temporary tables and their benefit.

I use an Access Data Project as the front end.  With my solution above I get to see all the records.  In your last example you suggest a temp table....how do I see the records at the front end if I use a temporary table (I know how to create them and get records in there but don't know how to get data back out!)

Many Thanks

Adding a CompanyId to your Tables and making CompanyID+POId (or whatever id) a Unique Index.

To view Temp Variable tables back just use it like a regular table like:
SELECT tblPOCo, OtherField1 FROM @BigTable

Now. I'm not recommending you use temp table variables since I don't know what you need to do with the result.

You'd want to have the company ID, or something equivalent, in your single PO table so that you could identify which PO's were for which company (assuming that you don't already have that).  To generate a separate sequence of PO numbers for each company, you'd just need to have a separate next (or last or current) PO number stored somewhere for each company.  For example, if you had a table with company info (ID, name, etc.), you might put the field there.  Then the software that assigns the PO numbers would just use the appropriate field for each company.

 The concept is simple enough.  How easy it would be to implement will depend on the specifics of your situation.

 James

something like this  will give you consequtive PO numbers for each company

select
      case when tblPOCo1.ponumber is not null then tblPOCo1.ponumber
      case when tblPOCo2.ponumber is not null then tblPOCo2.ponumber
      case when tblPOCo3.ponumber is not null then tblPOCo3.ponumber
      case when tblPOCo4.ponumber is not null then tblPOCo4.ponumber
      case when tblPOCo5.ponumber is not null then tblPOCo5.ponumber
      case when tblPOCo6.ponumber is not null then tblPOCo6.ponumber
      case when tblPOCo7.ponumber is not null then tblPOCo7.ponumber
      end ,
      tbljob.column1,
      tbljob.column2
from
      tbljob
      inner join tblpocox
      on
      tbljob.column1 = tblpocox.column1
      
      left outer join tblPOCo1
      on tblpocol.PO  =  tbljob.po
      left outer join tblPOCo1
      on tblpoco2.PO  =  tbljob.po
      left outer join tblPOCo1
      on tblpoco3.PO  =  tbljob.po
      left outer join tblPOCo1
      on tblpoco4.PO  =  tbljob.po
      left outer join tblPOCo1
      on tblpoco5.PO  =  tbljob.po
      left outer join tblPOCo1
      on tblpoco6.PO  =  tbljob.po
      left outer join tblPOCo1
      on tblpoco7.PO  =  tbljob.po

/*slight syntax error in last post use this one*/

select
      case when tblPOCo1.ponumber is not null then tblPOCo1.ponumber
       when tblPOCo2.ponumber is not null then tblPOCo2.ponumber
       when tblPOCo3.ponumber is not null then tblPOCo3.ponumber
       when tblPOCo4.ponumber is not null then tblPOCo4.ponumber
       when tblPOCo5.ponumber is not null then tblPOCo5.ponumber
       when tblPOCo6.ponumber is not null then tblPOCo6.ponumber
       when tblPOCo7.ponumber is not null then tblPOCo7.ponumber
      end ,
      tbljob.column1,
      tbljob.column2
from
      tbljob
      inner join tblpocox
      on
      tbljob.column1 = tblpocox.column1
      
      left outer join tblPOCo1
      on tblpocol.PO  =  tbljob.po
      left outer join tblPOCo2
      on tblpoco2.PO  =  tbljob.po
      left outer join tblPOCo3
      on tblpoco3.PO  =  tbljob.po
      left outer join tblPOCo4
      on tblpoco4.PO  =  tbljob.po
      left outer join tblPOCo5
      on tblpoco5.PO  =  tbljob.po
      left outer join tblPOCo6
      on tblpoco6.PO  =  tbljob.po
      left outer join tblPOCo7
      on tblpoco7.PO  =  tbljob.po