Uniquely identify same column name of two different table after join - mysql - php

Question

I have 2 tables. suppose a & b
a has id, name, roll. b has id,group,name
This name column data are not same. How can I select and uniquely identify them?
I know about
SELECT a.id,a.name,a.group FROM a,b ............
I know this. But this is an example. I am working with huge amount of data with 20-30 columns in each table. So I don't want to write the column names I need to select rather I want to write the names that I want to exclude.
Like
SELECT * Except b.name............
OR is there any way to uniquely identify after join. Like
.......... a,b WHERE a.name as name1
Please don't ask why those column names are same. I admit it was a mistake. But it's already implemented and heavily used. So finding another way. Is there any simple way to exclude a column while merging them?

Answer 1

Well, you can't write the names you wish to exclude. That is not how SQL works.
However, if writing out 20-30 column names is that much of a burden, you can use information_schema.columns. I write it that way, because 20-30 column names is not particularly large and writing them out is probably less effort than writing the question.
But, back to the solution. It looks something like this:
select concat(c.column_name, ' as ', 'a_', column_name, ', ')
from information_schema.columns c
where table_name = 'a' ;
You might want to include the table schema as well.

Answer 2

As an IDEA, what you can do is, if you want to avoid columns of specific table & your statements have multiple table, you can try following,
Suppose you have 20 columns in table a & 5 columns in table b, you want to avoid col2,col3 & col4 of table b. Standard method is that you should write name of all columns of table a & required columns of table b. But you can avoid to write long list of 20 columns of table by writing a.* & then type required columns of table b. Please see below statement.
Select a.*,b.col1,b.col4,b.col5 from a,b
But if you require to exclude some columns from both table, then I think there is no other way than writing all required column names from both table.

Answer 3

There is no way to exclude a column in SQL SELECT Statement, you can only select a column. You can give alias name to columns while selecting them like below, so that you can identity columns using those alias names.
SELECT a.id as [column1],a.name as [column2],a.group as [column3] FROM a,b ............

Answer 4

There is no way to exclude a specific column but you can avoid to write all columns name and easy your job by below steps-
Step1: Execute below query-
SELECT a.*,b.* FROM a,b ............limit 1;
Step2: Export it into csv format with headings.
Step3: Copyp first (heading) row from csv.
Step4: Delete columns, those are not required and use other columns in your query.

Answer 5

There's only one waY i could see-
first create a temorary table
CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE IF NOT EXISTS mytable
(id int(11) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (id)) ENGINE=MyISAM;
then put your column in temporary table-
SELECT * INTO mytable
FROM YourTable
/* Drop the cloumns that are not needed */
ALTER TABLE mytable
DROP COLUMN ColumnToDrop
/* Get results and drop temp table */
SELECT * FROM #TempTable
DROP TABLE #TempTable