mysql> SELECT a.tutorial_id, a.tutorial_author, b.tutorial_count
-> FROM tutorials_tbl a, tcount_tbl b
-> WHERE a.tutorial_author = b.tutorial_author;
+-------------+-----------------+----------------+
| tutorial_id | tutorial_author | tutorial_count |
+-------------+-----------------+----------------+
| 1 | John Poul | 1 |
| 3 | Sanjay | 1 |
+-------------+-----------------+----------------+
2 rows in set (0.01 sec)
mysql>
This is the mysql join query tutorial on http://www.tutorialspoint.com/mysql/mysql-using-joins.htm. But I need to join many tables. In that case.. How WHERE statement would look like? Please help...
That's a very old-fashioned way of writing joins.
New and funky way is to write it like this:
SELECT a.tutorial_id, a.tutorial_author, b.tutorial_count
FROM tutorials_tbl a
INNER JOIN tcount_tbl b ON a.tutorial_author = b.tutorial_author
To add more tables you just add more JOIN clauses. And since your tutorial seems a little outdated, here's the best explanation to joins I've ever seen, simple and beautiful and short: A Visual Explanation of SQL Joins
In FROM clause, you determine which tables to join via JOIN keyword, and describe common columns to pair using ON keyword.
SELECT a.tutorial_id, a.tutorial_author, b.tutorial_count
FROM tutorials_tbl a
JOIN tcount_tbl b ON a.tutorial_author = b.tutorial_author
Or you may use USING since shared column names are equal:
SELECT a.tutorial_id, a.tutorial_author, b.tutorial_count
FROM tutorials_tbl a
JOIN tcount_tbl b USING(tutorial_author)
Related
In a MySQL JOIN, what is the difference between ON and USING()? As far as I can tell, USING() is just more convenient syntax, whereas ON allows a little more flexibility when the column names are not identical. However, that difference is so minor, you'd think they'd just do away with USING().
Is there more to this than meets the eye? If yes, which should I use in a given situation?
It is mostly syntactic sugar, but a couple differences are noteworthy:
ON is the more general of the two. One can join tables ON a column, a set of columns and even a condition. For example:
SELECT * FROM world.City JOIN world.Country ON (City.CountryCode = Country.Code) WHERE ...
USING is useful when both tables share a column of the exact same name on which they join. In this case, one may say:
SELECT ... FROM film JOIN film_actor USING (film_id) WHERE ...
An additional nice treat is that one does not need to fully qualify the joining columns:
SELECT film.title, film_id -- film_id is not prefixed
FROM film
JOIN film_actor USING (film_id)
WHERE ...
To illustrate, to do the above with ON, we would have to write:
SELECT film.title, film.film_id -- film.film_id is required here
FROM film
JOIN film_actor ON (film.film_id = film_actor.film_id)
WHERE ...
Notice the film.film_id qualification in the SELECT clause. It would be invalid to just say film_id since that would make for an ambiguity:
ERROR 1052 (23000): Column 'film_id' in field list is ambiguous
As for select *, the joining column appears in the result set twice with ON while it appears only once with USING:
mysql> create table t(i int);insert t select 1;create table t2 select*from t;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.11 sec)
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
Records: 1 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.19 sec)
Records: 1 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
mysql> select*from t join t2 on t.i=t2.i;
+------+------+
| i | i |
+------+------+
| 1 | 1 |
+------+------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> select*from t join t2 using(i);
+------+
| i |
+------+
| 1 |
+------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql>
Thought I would chip in here with when I have found ON to be more useful than USING. It is when OUTER joins are introduced into queries.
ON benefits from allowing the results set of the table that a query is OUTER joining onto to be restricted while maintaining the OUTER join. Attempting to restrict the results set through specifying a WHERE clause will, effectively, change the OUTER join into an INNER join.
Granted this may be a relative corner case. Worth putting out there though.....
For example:
CREATE TABLE country (
countryId int(10) unsigned NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
country varchar(50) not null,
UNIQUE KEY countryUIdx1 (country)
) ENGINE=InnoDB;
insert into country(country) values ("France");
insert into country(country) values ("China");
insert into country(country) values ("USA");
insert into country(country) values ("Italy");
insert into country(country) values ("UK");
insert into country(country) values ("Monaco");
CREATE TABLE city (
cityId int(10) unsigned NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
countryId int(10) unsigned not null,
city varchar(50) not null,
hasAirport boolean not null default true,
UNIQUE KEY cityUIdx1 (countryId,city),
CONSTRAINT city_country_fk1 FOREIGN KEY (countryId) REFERENCES country (countryId)
) ENGINE=InnoDB;
insert into city (countryId,city,hasAirport) values (1,"Paris",true);
insert into city (countryId,city,hasAirport) values (2,"Bejing",true);
insert into city (countryId,city,hasAirport) values (3,"New York",true);
insert into city (countryId,city,hasAirport) values (4,"Napoli",true);
insert into city (countryId,city,hasAirport) values (5,"Manchester",true);
insert into city (countryId,city,hasAirport) values (5,"Birmingham",false);
insert into city (countryId,city,hasAirport) values (3,"Cincinatti",false);
insert into city (countryId,city,hasAirport) values (6,"Monaco",false);
-- Gah. Left outer join is now effectively an inner join
-- because of the where predicate
select *
from country left join city using (countryId)
where hasAirport
;
-- Hooray! I can see Monaco again thanks to
-- moving my predicate into the ON
select *
from country co left join city ci on (co.countryId=ci.countryId and ci.hasAirport)
;
Wikipedia has the following information about USING:
The USING construct is more than mere syntactic sugar, however, since
the result set differs from the result set of the version with the
explicit predicate. Specifically, any columns mentioned in the USING
list will appear only once, with an unqualified name, rather than once
for each table in the join. In the case above, there will be a single
DepartmentID column and no employee.DepartmentID or
department.DepartmentID.
Tables that it was talking about:
The Postgres documentation also defines them pretty well:
The ON clause is the most general kind of join condition: it takes a
Boolean value expression of the same kind as is used in a WHERE
clause. A pair of rows from T1 and T2 match if the ON expression
evaluates to true.
The USING clause is a shorthand that allows you to take advantage of
the specific situation where both sides of the join use the same name
for the joining column(s). It takes a comma-separated list of the
shared column names and forms a join condition that includes an
equality comparison for each one. For example, joining T1 and T2 with
USING (a, b) produces the join condition ON T1.a = T2.a AND T1.b =
T2.b.
Furthermore, the output of JOIN USING suppresses redundant columns:
there is no need to print both of the matched columns, since they must
have equal values. While JOIN ON produces all columns from T1 followed
by all columns from T2, JOIN USING produces one output column for each
of the listed column pairs (in the listed order), followed by any
remaining columns from T1, followed by any remaining columns from T2.
Database tables
To demonstrate how the USING and ON clauses work, let's assume we have the following post and post_comment database tables, which form a one-to-many table relationship via the post_id Foreign Key column in the post_comment table referencing the post_id Primary Key column in the post table:
The parent post table has 3 rows:
| post_id | title |
|---------|-----------|
| 1 | Java |
| 2 | Hibernate |
| 3 | JPA |
and the post_comment child table has the 3 records:
| post_comment_id | review | post_id |
|-----------------|-----------|---------|
| 1 | Good | 1 |
| 2 | Excellent | 1 |
| 3 | Awesome | 2 |
The JOIN ON clause using a custom projection
Traditionally, when writing an INNER JOIN or LEFT JOIN query, we happen to use the ON clause to define the join condition.
For example, to get the comments along with their associated post title and identifier, we can use the following SQL projection query:
SELECT
post.post_id,
title,
review
FROM post
INNER JOIN post_comment ON post.post_id = post_comment.post_id
ORDER BY post.post_id, post_comment_id
And, we get back the following result set:
| post_id | title | review |
|---------|-----------|-----------|
| 1 | Java | Good |
| 1 | Java | Excellent |
| 2 | Hibernate | Awesome |
The JOIN USING clause using a custom projection
When the Foreign Key column and the column it references have the same name, we can use the USING clause, like in the following example:
SELECT
post_id,
title,
review
FROM post
INNER JOIN post_comment USING(post_id)
ORDER BY post_id, post_comment_id
And, the result set for this particular query is identical to the previous SQL query that used the ON clause:
| post_id | title | review |
|---------|-----------|-----------|
| 1 | Java | Good |
| 1 | Java | Excellent |
| 2 | Hibernate | Awesome |
The USING clause works for Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MariaDB. SQL Server doesn't support the USING clause, so you need to use the ON clause instead.
The USING clause can be used with INNER, LEFT, RIGHT, and FULL JOIN statements.
SQL JOIN ON clause with SELECT *
Now, if we change the previous ON clause query to select all columns using SELECT *:
SELECT *
FROM post
INNER JOIN post_comment ON post.post_id = post_comment.post_id
ORDER BY post.post_id, post_comment_id
We are going to get the following result set:
| post_id | title | post_comment_id | review | post_id |
|---------|-----------|-----------------|-----------|---------|
| 1 | Java | 1 | Good | 1 |
| 1 | Java | 2 | Excellent | 1 |
| 2 | Hibernate | 3 | Awesome | 2 |
As you can see, the post_id is duplicated because both the post and post_comment tables contain a post_id column.
SQL JOIN USING clause with SELECT *
On the other hand, if we run a SELECT * query that features the USING clause for the JOIN condition:
SELECT *
FROM post
INNER JOIN post_comment USING(post_id)
ORDER BY post_id, post_comment_id
We will get the following result set:
| post_id | title | post_comment_id | review |
|---------|-----------|-----------------|-----------|
| 1 | Java | 1 | Good |
| 1 | Java | 2 | Excellent |
| 2 | Hibernate | 3 | Awesome |
You can see that this time, the post_id column is deduplicated, so there is a single post_id column being included in the result set.
Conclusion
If the database schema is designed so that Foreign Key column names match the columns they reference, and the JOIN conditions only check if the Foreign Key column value is equal to the value of its mirroring column in the other table, then you can employ the USING clause.
Otherwise, if the Foreign Key column name differs from the referencing column or you want to include a more complex join condition, then you should use the ON clause instead.
For those experimenting with this in phpMyAdmin, just a word:
phpMyAdmin appears to have a few problems with USING. For the record this is phpMyAdmin run on Linux Mint, version: "4.5.4.1deb2ubuntu2", Database server: "10.2.14-MariaDB-10.2.14+maria~xenial - mariadb.org binary distribution".
I have run SELECT commands using JOIN and USING in both phpMyAdmin and in Terminal (command line), and the ones in phpMyAdmin produce some baffling responses:
1) a LIMIT clause at the end appears to be ignored.
2) the supposed number of rows as reported at the top of the page with the results is sometimes wrong: for example 4 are returned, but at the top it says "Showing rows 0 - 24 (2503 total, Query took 0.0018 seconds.)"
Logging on to mysql normally and running the same queries does not produce these errors. Nor do these errors occur when running the same query in phpMyAdmin using JOIN ... ON .... Presumably a phpMyAdmin bug.
Short answer:
USING: when clause is ambiguous
ON: when clause has different comparison params
I am trying to select columns from 2 tables,
The INNER JOIN conditions are $table1.idaction_url=$table2.idaction AND $table1.idaction_name=$table2.idaction.
However, From the query below, there is no output. It seems like the INNER JOIN can only take 1 condition. If I put AND to include both conditions as shown in the query below, there wont be any output. Please look at the picture below. Please advice.
$mysql=("SELECT conv(hex($table1.idvisitor), 16, 10) as visitorId,
$table1.server_time, $table1.idaction_url,
$table1.time_spent_ref_action,$table2.name,
$table2.type, $table1.idaction_name, $table2.idaction
FROM $table1
INNER JOIN $table2
ON $table1.idaction_url=$table2.idaction
AND $table1.idaction_name=$table2.idaction
WHERE conv(hex(idvisitor), 16, 10)='".$id."'
ORDER BY server_time DESC");
Short answer:
You need to use two separate inner joins, not only a single join.
E.g.
SELECT `actionurls`.`name` AS `actionUrl`, `actionnames`.`name` AS `actionName`
FROM `table1`
INNER JOIN `table2` AS `actionurls` ON `table1`.`idaction_url` = `actionurls`.`idaction`
INNER JOIN `table2` AS `actionnames` ON `table1`.`idaction_name` = `actionurls`.`idaction`
(Modify this query with any additional fields you want to select).
In depth: INNER JOIN, when done on a value unique to the second table (the table joined to the first in this operation) will only ever fetch one row. What you want to do is fetch data from the other table twice, into the same row, reading the select part of the statement.
INNER JOIN table2 ON [comparison] will, for each row selected from table1, grab any rows from table2 for which [comparison] is TRUE, then copy the row from table1 N times, where N is the amount of rows found in table2. If N = 0, then the row is skipped. In our case N=1 so INNER JOIN of idaction_name in table1 to idaction in table2 for example will allow you to select all the action names.
In order to get the action urls as well we have to INNER JOIN a second time. Now you can't join the same table twice normally, as SQL won't know which of the two joined tables is meant when you type table2.name in the first part of your query. This would be ambiguous if both had the same name. There's a solution for this, table aliases.
The output (of my answer above) is going to be something like:
+-----+------------------------+-------------------------+
| Row | actionUrl | actionName |
+-----+------------------------+-------------------------+
| 1 | unx.co.jp/ | UNIX | Kumamoto Home |
| 2 | unx.co.jp/profile.html | UNIX | Kumamoto Profile |
| ... | ... | ... |
+-----+------------------------+-------------------------+
While if you used only a single join, you would get this kind of output (using OR):
+-----+-------------------------+
| Row | actionUrl |
+-----+-------------------------+
| 1 | unx.co.jp/ |
| 2 | UNIX | Kumamoto Home |
| 3 | unx.co.jp/profile.html |
| 4 | UNIX | Kumamoto Profile |
| ... | ... |
+-----+-------------------------+
Using AND and a single join, you only get output if idaction_name == idaction_url is TRUE. This is not the case, so there's no output.
If you want to know more about how to use JOINS, consult the manual about them.
Sidenote
Also, I can't help but notice you're using variables (e.g. $table1) that store the names of the tables. Do you make sure that those values do not contain user input? And, if they do, do you at least whitelist a list of tables that users can access? You may have some security issues with this.
INNER JOIN does not put any restriction on number of conditions it can have.
The zero resultant rows means, there is no rows satisfying the two conditions simultaneously.
Make sure you are joining using correct columns. Try going step by step to identify from where the data is lost
I have three tables.
The first table is like:
+----+----+----+
| id | x | y |
+----+----+----+
The second and third tables are like:
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
| id | Z1 | Z2 | Z3 | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | Zn |
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
n is quite large, about 800-900.
I know it is quite ugly tables and database. But it is a raw data set and a learning set of a certain experiment. Please, just ignore it.
And a skeleton of a query is like:
'SELECT a.*, b.*, c.* \
FROM `test_xy` a, `test_1` b, `test_2` c \
WHERE a.id = b.id AND b.id = c.id'
What I concern is, the result with the query includes id field three times. I want id field to appear just one time at the front of the result.
I can do it by slicing the result table (by Python, MATLAB, etc.)
But, is there a better way to do this with a large number of columns? I mean, can id field of the second and third tables be excluded at the query stage?
The answer is the USING syntax: MySQL specific by the way. http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/join.html. Learn to use JOINs before you do anything else; putting the jon condition into the where clause is just plan wrong.
SELECT a.*, b.*, c.*
FROM `test_xy` a JOIN `test_1` b USING(`id)
JOIN `test_2` c USING(`id)
I have a little SQL but I can't find the way to get back text just numbers. - revised!
SELECT if( `linktype` = "group",
(SELECT contactgroups.grname
FROM contactgroups, groupmembers
WHERE contactgroups.id = groupmembers.id ???
AND contactgroups.id = groupmembers.link_id),
(SELECT contactmain.contact_sur
FROM contactmain, groupmembers
WHERE contactmain.id = groupmembers.id ???
AND contactmain.id = groupmembers.link_id) ) AS adat
FROM groupmembers;
As now I have improved a bit gives back some info but ??? (thanks to minitech) indicate my problem. I can't see how could I fix... Any advice welcomed! Thansk
Contactmain (id, contact_sur, email2)
data:
1 | Peter | email#email.com
2 | Andrew| email2#email.com
Contactgroups (id, grname)
data:
1 | All
2 | Trustee
3 | Comitee
Groupmembers (id, group_id, linktype, link_id)
data:
1 | 1 | contact | 1
2 | 1 | contact | 2
3 | 2 | contact | 1
4 | 3 | group | 2
And I would like to list out who is in the 'Comitee' the result should be Andrew and Trustee if I am right:)
It does look a bit redundant on the join since you are implying both the ID and Link_ID columns are the same value. Since BOTH select values are derived from a qualification to the group members table, I have restructured the query to use THAT as the primary table and do a LEFT JOIN to each of the other tables, anticipating from your query that the link should be found from ONE or the OTHER tables. So, with each respective LEFT JOIN, you will go through the GroupMembers table only ONCE. Now, your IF(). Since the group members is the basis, and we have BOTH tables available and linked, we just grab the column from one table vs the other respectively. I've included the "linktype" too just for reference purposes. By using the STRAIGHT_JOIN will help the engine from trying to change the interpretation of how to join the tables.
SELECT STRAIGHT_JOIN
gm.linktype,
if( gm.linktype = "group", cg.grname, cm.contact_sur ) ADat
from
groupmembers gm
left join contactgroups cg
ON gm.link_id = cg.id
left join contactmain cm
ON gm.link_id = cm.id
If contactgroups.id must equal groupmembers.id but must also equal 2, that's redundant and also probably where your problem is. It works fine as you've written it: http://ideone.com/7EGLZ so without knowing what it's actually supposed to do I can't help more.
EDIT: I'm unfamiliar with the comma-separated FROM, but it gives the same result since you don't select anything from the other table so it doesn't really matter.
I've got a core table and and 3 tables that extend the 'core' table in different ways.
I'm working with MLS data and I have a 'common' table that contains information common to all mls listings and then a table that has specifically "residential" information, one for "commercial",etc... I have been using mls number to join a single table when I know a listing when the property type is known, but for searching I want to join all of them and have the special fields available for search criteria (not simply searching the common table).
What type of join will give me a dataset that will contain all listings (including the extended fields in the idx tables) ?
For each Common table record there is a single corresponding record in ONLY ONE of the idx tables.
___________
| |
| COMMON |
| |
|___________|
_|_
|
___________________|_____________________
_|_ _|_ _|_
_____|_____ _____|______ ____|______
| | | | | |
| IDX1 | | IDX2 | | IDX3 |
| | | | | |
|___________| |____________| |___________|
If you want everything in one row, you can use something like this format. Basically it gives you all the "Common" fields, then the other fields if there is a match otherwise NULL:
SELECT Common.*,
Idx1.*,
Idx2.*,
Idx3.*
FROM Common
LEFT JOIN Idx1
ON Idx1.MLSKey = Common.MLSKey
LEFT JOIN Idx2
ON Idx2.MLSKey = Common.MLSKey
LEFT JOIN Idx3
ON Idx3.MLSKey = Common.MLSKey
Bear in mind it's better to list out fields than to use the SELECT * whenever possible...
Also I'm assuming MySQL syntax is the same as SQL Server, which is what I use.
I have a similar set up of tables where the table 'jobs' is the core table.
I have this query that selects certain elements from each of the other 2 tables:
SELECT jobs.frequency, twitterdetails.accountname, feeds.feed
FROM jobs
JOIN twitterdetails ON twitterdetails.ID = jobs.accountID
JOIN feeds ON jobs.FeedID = feeds.FeedID
WHERE jobs.username ='".$currentuser."';");
So, as you can see, no specific JOIN, but the linking fields defined. You'd probably just need an extra JOIN line for your set up.
Ugly solution / poor attempt / may have misunderstood question:
SELECT common.*,IDX1.field,NULL,NULL FROM COMMON
LEFT JOIN IDX1 ON COMMON.ID = IDX1.ID
WHERE TYPE="RESIDENTIAL"
UNION ALL
SELECT common.*,NULL,IDX2.field,NULL FROM COMMON
LEFT JOIN IDX2 ON COMMON.ID = IDX2.ID
WHERE TYPE="RESIDENTIAL"
UNION ALL
SELECT common.*,NULL,NULL,IDX3.field FROM COMMON
LEFT JOIN IDX3 ON COMMON.ID = IDX3.ID
WHERE TYPE="INDUSTRIAL"
Orbit is close. Use inner join, not left join. You don't want common to show up in the join if it does not have a row in idx.
You MUST union 3 queries to get the proper results assuming each record in common can only have 1 idx table. Plug in "NULL" to fill in the columns that each idx table is missing so they can be unioned.
BTW your table design is good.