Is this the right way to join tables to fetch data? - mysql

Question

I have a database with the tables:
Student(SID,Name,Surname,Age)
Registration(StudentID,CourseID)
Course(CID,Name,Cost)
I would like to extract only the name of the courses with students younger than 20. Will the query below do just that?
SELECT C.NAME
FROM Course C
INNER JOIN Registration
INNER JOIN Student S
WHERE CID = CourseID
AND SID = StudentID
AND Age < 20
GROUP BY C.NAME
I would also like to extract the number of students in each course having students younger than 20. Is it correct to do it as below?
SELECT count(S.NAME)
,C.NAME
FROM Student S
INNER JOIN Course C
INNER JOIN Registration
WHERE Age < 20
AND CID = CourseID
AND SID = StudentID
GROUP BY C.NAME

Answer 1

You are missing the ON part for the join otherwise it would just be a CROSS JOIN.
Your first query should look like this if you want just a distinct list of student names:
SELECT DISTINCT C.NAME
FROM Course C
INNER JOIN Registration R ON C.CID = R.CourseID
INNER JOIN Student S ON R.StudentID = S.SID
WHERE Age < 20
Your second query shouldn't really have the C.Name in the select if you want to get just a count unless you want a count of how many students have that name.
SELECT count(*)
FROM Student S
INNER JOIN Registration R ON s.SID = R.StudentID
INNER JOIN Course C ON c.CID = R.CourseID
WHERE Age < 20
GROUP BY C.NAME

Answer 2

First join these tables, then group by Course's PK(CID), Add the HAVING condition to filter the course which has students younger than 20.
Then use Course table to join the result to get the course name and count of students in the course.
SELECT
T1.Name,
T2.StudentCount
FROM
Course T1
INNER JOIN (
SELECT
c.CID,
COUNT(s.SID) AS StudentCount
FROM
Course c
LEFT JOIN Registration r ON c.CID = r.CourseID
LEFT JOIN Student s ON s.SID = r.StudentID
GROUP BY c.CID
HAVING COUNT(IF(s.Age < 20, 1, NULL)) > 0
) T2 ON T1.CID = T2.CID

Answer 3

More correctly, you should move the conditions of the join, to the join statements themselves by including them in the on clause instead of the where. While the results may not change in this instance, if you were to start including outer joins you would encounter difficulties.
SELECT count(S.NAME)
,C.NAME
FROM Student S
INNER JOIN Registration R
ON s.SID = R.StudentID
INNER JOIN Course C
ON c.CID = R.CourseID
WHERE Age < 20
GROUP BY C.NAME
There's a fiddle here showing it in action: http://sqlfiddle.com/#!9/c3b8f/1
Your first query will also produce the results you want, but again, you should move the join predicates to the join itself. Also, you don't need to perform the grouping just to get distinct values, mysql has an expression for that called distinct. So rewritten, the first query would look like:
SELECT DISTINCT C.NAME
FROM Student S
INNER JOIN Registration R
ON s.SID = R.StudentID
INNER JOIN Course C
ON c.CID = R.CourseID
WHERE Age < 20.
Again, the results are the same as what you have already but it is easier to 'read' and will put you in good stead when you move on to other queries. As it stands you have mixed implicit and explicit join syntax.
This fiddle demonstrates both queries: http://sqlfiddle.com/#!9/c3b8f/4
edit
I may have misinterpreted your original question - if you want the total number of students enrolled in a course with at least one student under 19, you can use a query like this:
select name, count(*)
from course c
inner join registration r
on c.cid = r.courseid
where exists (
select 1
from course cc
inner join registration r
on cc.cid = r.courseid
inner join student s
on s.sid = r.studentid
where cc.cid = c.cid
group by cc.cid
having min(s.age) < 20
)
group by name;
Again with the updated fiddle here: http://sqlfiddle.com/#!9/c3b8f/17