A site that I’m currently working on will execute a query 26 times but only changes a letter within the where clause. I am looking to make this more efficient by running only one query.

Here is an example query:

SELECT table1.id, table1.name, table1.url FROM table1        LEFT JOIN table2 ON table1.aid = table2.aid WHERE LOWER(table1.name) LIKE 'a%'   AND table1.rank > 0   AND table1.view = 1 ORDER BY table2.important DESC, table1.rank ASC LIMIT 5 

I have managed to create a temporary table in which would return each letter of the alphabet however I cannot figure out how to fetch the letter and push it into the where clause.

I will end up creating a table for the alphabet but this is how it currently runs (for just now):

SELECT * FROM (SELECT 'a' AS letter     UNION SELECT 'b'     UNION SELECT 'c'     ...     UNION SELECT 'y'     UNION SELECT 'z') AS alphabet 

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.