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Write a SQL query using UNION ALL (not UNION) that uses the WHERE clause to eliminate duplicates. Why might you want to do this? You can avoid duplicates using UNION ALL and still run much faster than UNION DISTINCT (which is actually same as UNION) by running a query like this: SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE a=X UNION ALL SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE b=Y AND a!=X The key is the AND a!=X part. This gives you the benefits of the UNION (a.k.a., UNION DISTINCT) command, while avoiding much of its performance hit.