How to write UNION in Doctrine 2.0

Well, I found maybe the best solution:

/**
 * @Entity
 * @InheritanceType("JOINED")
 * @DiscriminatorColumn(name="discr", type="string")
 * @DiscriminatorMap({"group" = "NotificationGroup", "event" = "NotificationEvent"})
 */
class Notification {
   // ...
}

And then two classes (NotificationGroup and NotificationEvent) extending Notification:

/**
 * @Entity
 */
class NotificationGroup extends Notification {
    //...
}

/**
 * @Entity
 */
class NotificationEvent extends Notification {
    //...
}

UNION is not supported in DQL, but you can still write a UNION query and use the Native Query capabilities to retrieve the data:

http://doctrine-orm.readthedocs.org/en/latest/reference/native-sql.html

However from your example it seems you want to use some form of table per class inheritance, which is not yet supported. There is another form of inheritance, (Joined Table Inheritance) that works though, if you can change your schema.

http://www.doctrine-project.org/projects/orm/2.0/docs/reference/inheritance-mapping/en#class-table-inheritance

A view would be another good solution, but then it depends on your database vendor if it also supports write operations or not.