Incomprehensible query behaviour - mysql

Question

I have multiple tables, related by multiple foreign keys as in the following example:
Recipes(id_recipe,name,calories,category) - id_recipe as PK.
Ingredients(id_ingredient,name,type) - id_ingredient as PK.
Contains(id_ingredient,id_recipe,quantity,unit) - (id_ingredient,id_recipe) as PK, and as Foreign Keys for Recipes(id_recipe) and Ingredients(id_ingredient).
You can see this relations represented in this image.
So basically Contains is a bridge between Recipes and Ingredients.
The query I try to write it's supposed to give as result the names of the recipes whose ingredients type are "bovine" but not "lactic".
My attempt:
SELECT DISTINCT Recipes.name
FROM Ingredients JOIN Contains USING(id_ingredient) JOIN Recipes USING (id_recipe)
WHERE Ingredients.type = "bovin"
AND Ingredients.type <> "lactic";
The problem is it still shows me recipes that have at least one lactic ingredient.
I would appreciate any help!

Answer 1

This is the general form of the kind of query you need:
SELECT *
FROM tableA
WHERE tableA.ID NOT IN (
SELECT table_ID
FROM ...
)
;
-- EXAMPLE BELOW --
The subquery gives the id values of all recipes that the "lactic" ingredient is used in, the outer query says "give me all the recipes not in that list".
SELECT DISTINCT Recipes.name
FROM Recipes
WHERE id_recipe IN (
SELECT DISTINCT id_recipe
FROM `Ingredients` AS `i`
INNER JOIN `Contains` AS `c` USING (id_ingredient)
WHERE `i`.`type` = "lactic"
)
;
Alternatively, using your original query:
You could've changed the second join to a LEFT JOIN, changed it's USING to an ON & included AND type = "lactic" there instead, and ended the query with HAVING Ingredients.type IS NULL (or WHERE, I just prefer HAVING for "final result" filtering). This would tell you which items could not be joined to the "lactic" ingredient.

Answer 2

A common solution of this type of question (checking conditions over a set of rows) utilizes aggregate + CASE.
SELECT R.Name
FROM Recipes R
INNER JOIN Contains C
on R.ID_Recipe = C.ID_Recipe
INNER JOIN Ingredients I
on C.ID_Ingredient = I.ID_Ingredient
GROUP BY R.name
having -- at least one 'lactic' ingredient
sum(case when type = 'lactic' then 1 else 0 end) = 0
and -- no 'bovin' ingredient
sum(case when type = 'bovin' then 1 else 0 end) > 0
It's easy to extend to any number of ingredients and any kind of question.
Hijacked the fiddle of xQbert

Answer 3

SELECT R.NAME
FROM CONTAINS C
INNER JOIN INGREDIENTS I
ON I.ID_INGREDIENTS = C.ID_INGREDIENTS AND I.TYPE = 'bovine' AND I.TYPE <> "lactic"
INNER JOIN RECIPES R
ON R.ID_RECIPE = C.ID_RECIPE
GROUP BY R.NAME
That should work, maybe you need to escape 'contains'. It could be recognized as a SQL function.

Answer 4

SQL Fiddle
In my example burgers and pasta have 'Bovin' and thus show up. So do cookies but cookies also have 'lactic' which is why they get excluded.
SELECT R.Name
FROM Recipes R
INNER JOIN Contains C
on R.ID_Recipe = C.ID_Recipe
INNER JOIN Ingredients I
on C.ID_Ingredient = I.ID_Ingredient
LEFT JOIN (SELECT R2.ID_Recipe
FROM Ingredients I2
INNER JOIN Contains C2
on C2.ID_Ingredient = I2.ID_Ingredient
INNER JOIN Recipes R2
on R2.ID_Recipe = C2.ID_Recipe
WHERE Type = 'lactic'
GROUP BY R2.ID_Recipe) T3
on T3.ID_Recipe = R.ID_Recipe
WHERE T3.ID_Recipe is null
and I.Type = 'Bovin'
GROUP BY R.name
There likely is a more elegant way of doing this. I really wanted to CTE this and join it to itself.. but no CTE in mySQL. Likely a way to do this using exists too.... I'm not a big fan of using IN clauses as the performance generally suffers. Exists fastest, Joins 2nd fastest, in slowest (generally speaking)
The inline view (sub query) returns the ID_recipe of those you don't want to include.
The outer query returns the Name of the recipes with ingredients you want.
By joining these two together using an outer join we return all recipes and only those with the undesired ingredient. We then limit the results to only those where the recipe ID doesn't exist for the undesired ingredient. (undesired ingredient not found) you'll get only those recipes having all desired ingredients.

Answer 5

You can use NOT EXISTS for this.
Try this:
SELECT DISTINCT Recipes.`name`
FROM Recipes JOIN Contains AS C1 USING (id_recipe) JOIN Ingredients USING(id_ingredient)
WHERE Ingredients.type = "bovin"
AND NOT EXISTS (
SELECT 1
FROM Contains AS C2 JOIN Ingredients USING(id_ingredient)
WHERE C1.id_recipe = C2.id_recipe
AND Ingredients.type = "lactic"
)