Combine two tables for one output

Question

Say I have two tables:

KnownHours:

ChargeNum    CategoryID    Month    Hours
111111       1             2/1/09   10
111111       1             3/1/09   30
111111       1             4/1/09   50
222222       1             3/1/09   40
111111       2             4/1/09   50

UnknownHours:

ChargeNum   Month   Hours
111111      2/1/09  70
111111      3/1/09  40.5
222222      7/1/09  25.5

I need to group these hours, ignoring Month, into a single data table so that my expected result is the following:

ChargeNum    CategoryID     Hours
111111       1              90
111111       2              50
111111       Unknown        110.5
222222       1              40
222222       Unknown        25.5

I cannot seem to figure this out. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT: I need to sum the hours for each ChargeNum/Category combination. I updated the sample data to reflect this.

Answer 1

You'll need to use UNION to combine the results of two queries. In your case:

SELECT ChargeNum, CategoryID, SUM(Hours)
FROM KnownHours
GROUP BY ChargeNum, CategoryID
UNION ALL
SELECT ChargeNum, 'Unknown' AS CategoryID, SUM(Hours)
FROM UnknownHours
GROUP BY ChargeNum

Note - If you use UNION ALL as in above, it's no slower than running the two queries separately as it does no duplicate-checking.

Answer 2

In your expected output, you've got the second last row sum incorrect, it should be 40 according to the data in your tables, but here is the query:

Select  ChargeNum, CategoryId, Sum(Hours)
From    (
    Select  ChargeNum, CategoryId, Hours
    From    KnownHours
    Union
    Select  ChargeNum, 'Unknown' As CategoryId, Hours
    From    UnknownHours
) As a
Group By ChargeNum, CategoryId
Order By ChargeNum, CategoryId

And here is the output:

ChargeNum  CategoryId 
---------- ---------- ----------------------
111111     1          40
111111     2          50
111111     Unknown    70
222222     1          40
222222     Unknown    25.5

Answer 3

Can we take this a step farther and say I only want to see rows when combined that have 50 Hours or more... I've tried this, but get an error that it can't find SumHours...

Select  ChargeNum, CategoryId, Sum(Hours) As SumHours
From    (
    Select  ChargeNum, CategoryId, Hours
    From    KnownHours
    Union
    Select  ChargeNum, 'Unknown' As CategoryId, Hours
    From    UnknownHours
) As a
WHERE (SumHours>=50)
Group By ChargeNum, CategoryId
Order By ChargeNum, CategoryId

So I tried

    Select  ChargeNum, CategoryId, Sum(Hours) As SumHours
From    (
    Select  ChargeNum, CategoryId, Hours
    From    KnownHours
    Union
    Select  ChargeNum, 'Unknown' As CategoryId, Hours
    From    UnknownHours
) As a
WHERE (Hours>=50)
Group By ChargeNum, CategoryId
Order By ChargeNum, CategoryId

But this isn't giving the sum of the hours on both tables...