Use UNION ALL instead of UNION when you can
It's a shame that UNION ALL needs an extra keyword compared to UNION. It would be much better if the SQL standard had been defined to support:
UNION (allowing duplicates)UNION DISTINCT (removing duplicates)
Not only is the removal of duplicates rarely needed (or sometimes even wrong), it is also quite slow for large result sets with many columns, as the two subselects need to be ordered, and each tuple needs to be compared with its subsequent tuple.
Note that even if the SQL standard specifies INTERSECT ALL and EXCEPT ALL, hardly any database implements these less useful set operations.
The Cure:
Every time you write a UNION, think if you actually wanted to write UNION ALL.
Source
SqlBestPractices