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The [merge table function](https://clickhouse.com/docs/sql-reference/table-functions/merge) lets us query multiple tables in parallel.
It does this by creating a temporary [Merge](https://clickhouse.com/docs/engines/table-engines/special/merge) table and derives this table's structure by taking a union of their columns and by deriving common types.

## Setup tables[​](#setup-tables "Direct link to Setup tables")

We're going to learn how to use this function with help from [Jeff Sackmann's tennis dataset](https://github.com/JeffSackmann/tennis_atp).
We're going to process CSV files that contain matches going back to the 1960s, but we'll create a slightly different schema for each decade.
We'll also add a couple of extra columns for the 1990s decade.

The import statements are shown below:

```
CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE atp_matches_1960s ORDER BY tourney_id AS
SELECT tourney_id, surface, winner_name, loser_name, winner_seed, loser_seed, score
FROM url('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JeffSackmann/tennis_atp/refs/heads/master/atp_matches_{1968..1969}.csv')
SETTINGS schema_inference_make_columns_nullable=0, 
         schema_inference_hints='winner_seed Nullable(String), loser_seed Nullable(UInt8)';

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE atp_matches_1970s ORDER BY tourney_id AS 
SELECT tourney_id, surface, winner_name, loser_name, winner_seed, loser_seed, splitByWhitespace(score) AS score
FROM url('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JeffSackmann/tennis_atp/refs/heads/master/atp_matches_{1970..1979}.csv')
SETTINGS schema_inference_make_columns_nullable=0, 
         schema_inference_hints='winner_seed Nullable(UInt8), loser_seed Nullable(UInt8)';

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE atp_matches_1980s ORDER BY tourney_id AS
SELECT tourney_id, surface, winner_name, loser_name, winner_seed, loser_seed, splitByWhitespace(score) AS score
FROM url('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JeffSackmann/tennis_atp/refs/heads/master/atp_matches_{1980..1989}.csv')
SETTINGS schema_inference_make_columns_nullable=0,
         schema_inference_hints='winner_seed Nullable(UInt16), loser_seed Nullable(UInt16)';

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE atp_matches_1990s ORDER BY tourney_id AS
SELECT tourney_id, surface, winner_name, loser_name, winner_seed, loser_seed, splitByWhitespace(score) AS score,
       toBool(arrayExists(x -> position(x, 'W/O') > 0, score))::Nullable(bool) AS walkover,
       toBool(arrayExists(x -> position(x, 'RET') > 0, score))::Nullable(bool) AS retirement
FROM url('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JeffSackmann/tennis_atp/refs/heads/master/atp_matches_{1990..1999}.csv')
SETTINGS schema_inference_make_columns_nullable=0,
         schema_inference_hints='winner_seed Nullable(UInt16), loser_seed Nullable(UInt16), surface Enum(\'Hard\', \'Grass\', \'Clay\', \'Carpet\')';
```

## Schema of multiple tables[​](#schema-multiple-tables "Direct link to Schema of multiple tables")

We can run the following query to list the columns in each table along with their types side by side, so that it's easier to see the differences.

```
SELECT * EXCEPT(position) FROM (
    SELECT position, name,
       any(if(table = 'atp_matches_1960s', type, null)) AS 1960s,
       any(if(table = 'atp_matches_1970s', type, null)) AS 1970s,
       any(if(table = 'atp_matches_1980s', type, null)) AS 1980s,
       any(if(table = 'atp_matches_1990s', type, null)) AS 1990s
    FROM system.columns
    WHERE database = currentDatabase() AND table LIKE 'atp_matches%'
    GROUP BY ALL
    ORDER BY position ASC
)
SETTINGS output_format_pretty_max_value_width=25;
```

```
┌─name────────┬─1960s────────────┬─1970s───────────┬─1980s────────────┬─1990s─────────────────────┐
│ tourney_id  │ String           │ String          │ String           │ String                    │
│ surface     │ String           │ String          │ String           │ Enum8('Hard' = 1, 'Grass'⋯│
│ winner_name │ String           │ String          │ String           │ String                    │
│ loser_name  │ String           │ String          │ String           │ String                    │
│ winner_seed │ Nullable(String) │ Nullable(UInt8) │ Nullable(UInt16) │ Nullable(UInt16)          │
│ loser_seed  │ Nullable(UInt8)  │ Nullable(UInt8) │ Nullable(UInt16) │ Nullable(UInt16)          │
│ score       │ String           │ Array(String)   │ Array(String)    │ Array(String)             │
│ walkover    │ ᴺᵁᴸᴸ             │ ᴺᵁᴸᴸ            │ ᴺᵁᴸᴸ             │ Nullable(Bool)            │
│ retirement  │ ᴺᵁᴸᴸ             │ ᴺᵁᴸᴸ            │ ᴺᵁᴸᴸ             │ Nullable(Bool)            │
└─────────────┴──────────────────┴─────────────────┴──────────────────┴───────────────────────────┘
```

Let's go through the differences:

- 1970s changes the type of `winner_seed` from `Nullable(String)` to `Nullable(UInt8)` and `score` from `String` to `Array(String)`.
- 1980s changes `winner_seed` and `loser_seed` from `Nullable(UInt8)` to `Nullable(UInt16)`.
- 1990s changes `surface` from `String` to `Enum('Hard', 'Grass', 'Clay', 'Carpet')` and adds the `walkover` and `retirement` columns.

## Querying multiple tables with merge[​](#querying-multiple-tables "Direct link to Querying multiple tables with merge")

Let's write a query to find the matches that John McEnroe won against someone who was seeded #1:

```
SELECT loser_name, score
FROM merge('atp_matches*')
WHERE winner_name = 'John McEnroe'
AND loser_seed = 1;
```

```
┌─loser_name────┬─score───────────────────────────┐
│ Bjorn Borg    │ ['6-3','6-4']                   │
│ Bjorn Borg    │ ['7-6','6-1','6-7','5-7','6-4'] │
│ Bjorn Borg    │ ['7-6','6-4']                   │
│ Bjorn Borg    │ ['4-6','7-6','7-6','6-4']       │
│ Jimmy Connors │ ['6-1','6-3']                   │
│ Ivan Lendl    │ ['6-2','4-6','6-3','6-7','7-6'] │
│ Ivan Lendl    │ ['6-3','3-6','6-3','7-6']       │
│ Ivan Lendl    │ ['6-1','6-3']                   │
│ Stefan Edberg │ ['6-2','6-3']                   │
│ Stefan Edberg │ ['7-6','6-2']                   │
│ Stefan Edberg │ ['6-2','6-2']                   │
│ Jakob Hlasek  │ ['6-3','7-6']                   │
└───────────────┴─────────────────────────────────┘
```

Next, let's say we want to filter those matches to find the ones where McEnroe was seeded #3 or lower.
This is a bit trickier because `winner_seed` uses different types across the various tables:

```
SELECT loser_name, score, winner_seed
FROM merge('atp_matches*')
WHERE winner_name = 'John McEnroe'
AND loser_seed = 1
AND multiIf(
  variantType(winner_seed) = 'UInt8', variantElement(winner_seed, 'UInt8') >= 3,
  variantType(winner_seed) = 'UInt16', variantElement(winner_seed, 'UInt16') >= 3,
  variantElement(winner_seed, 'String')::UInt16 >= 3
);
```

We use the [`variantType`](/docs/sql-reference/functions/other-functions#variantType) function to check the type of `winner_seed` for each row and then [`variantElement`](/docs/sql-reference/functions/other-functions#variantElement) to extract the underlying value.
When the type is `String`, we cast to a number and then do the comparison.
The result of running the query is shown below:

```
┌─loser_name────┬─score─────────┬─winner_seed─┐
│ Bjorn Borg    │ ['6-3','6-4'] │ 3           │
│ Stefan Edberg │ ['6-2','6-3'] │ 6           │
│ Stefan Edberg │ ['7-6','6-2'] │ 4           │
│ Stefan Edberg │ ['6-2','6-2'] │ 7           │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴─────────────┘
```

## Which table do rows come from when using merge?[​](#which-table-merge "Direct link to Which table do rows come from when using merge?")

What if we want to know which table rows come from?
We can use the `_table` virtual column to do this, as shown in the following query:

```
SELECT _table, loser_name, score, winner_seed
FROM merge('atp_matches*')
WHERE winner_name = 'John McEnroe'
AND loser_seed = 1
AND multiIf(
  variantType(winner_seed) = 'UInt8', variantElement(winner_seed, 'UInt8') >= 3,
  variantType(winner_seed) = 'UInt16', variantElement(winner_seed, 'UInt16') >= 3,
  variantElement(winner_seed, 'String')::UInt16 >= 3
);
```