Search MySql db with multiple "WHERE IN" and "OR" not working - mysql

Suppose I have a table like this:
Suppose my user inputs that he wants to see all records where gender is male AND eyecolor = grey.
I already have the following SQL for that:
SELECT User, question, answer FROM [Table] WHERE User IN (
SELECT User FROM [table] WHERE (question, answer) IN (
('gender', 'male'),
('eyecolor', 'grey')
)
)
GROUP BY User
HAVING count(distinct question, answer) = 2)
However, what if my user wants to see all records for (gender = male OR gender = female) AND eyecolor = grey ? How would I format the above sql query to get it to be able to find that?
(Keep in mind, this is a searchform, so eyecolor and gender are only a few fields used for searching; I need to be able to search with and/or combo's)
I'm thinking the only way I can get this to work is something like:
SELECT User
FROM [table]
WHERE (gender = male OR gender = female) AND eyecolor = blue
And my php would have to build the query so that if the user enters more fields, the query expands with more WHERE's etc.?
I have been searching all over but have not been able to get it to work.. Admittedly I'm not the world's greatest with this.

http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/2e112/1/0
select *
from stuff
where ID in (
select ID
from stuff
where (question='gender' and answer in ('male','female')) or
(question='eyecolor' and answer='grey')
group by ID
having count(ID)=2
)
where 2 is the number of conditions in the nested where statement. If you run that nested select on its own, it will give you just a distinct list of ID's that fit the conditions. The outer statement allows the query to return all records for the ID's that fit those conditions.
i edited this because.... i was wrong before
k... http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/2f526/1/0
select *
from stuff
where (question='gender' and answer in ('male','female')) or
(question='eyecolor' and answer='grey') or
(question='city' and answer in ('madrid','amsterdam'))
for this query, we return one row that matches any of those conditions for any ID. only ID's that satisfy at least one of those conditions will appear in the results.
select ID, count(*) as matches
from stuff
where (question='gender' and answer in ('male','female')) or
(question='eyecolor' and answer='grey') or
(question='city' and answer in ('madrid','amsterdam'))
group by ID;
then we add the group by, so we can see how many rows are returned for each user and how many conditions they met (count(*)).
select ID
from stuff
where (question='gender' and answer in ('male','female')) or
(question='eyecolor' and answer='grey') or
(question='city' and answer in ('madrid','amsterdam'))
group by ID
having count(ID)=3;
the having count(ID)=3; is what makes this query work. we only want ID's that had 3 rows returned because we have 3 conditions.
and.... we can't use and because no row in that table will ever meet more than one of those conditions at a single time. question cannot be gender, eyecolor and city all at the same time. it has to do with your table layout. city will never be both madrid and amsterdam at the same time.... and will give us nothing. so... by using the having and an or... we can do stuff that's happy...?
and to go on a tangent.... if your table looked like this:
ID gender eyecolor city
---------------------------------------------
100 male blue madrid
200 female grey amsterdam
300 male brown somewhere
you would use and because....
select *
from table
where gender in ('male','female') and
city in ('madrid','amsterdam') and
eyecolor = 'grey'
but your table is a special one and didn't want to go that way because you really shouldn't have a column for every question... what if they change or what if you add 20? that'd be hard to maintain.
and....
select ID
from stuff
where question in ('gender','eyecolor','city') and
answer in ('male','female','grey','madrid','amsterdam')
group by ID
having count(ID)=3;
does also work but i would really be cautious with that because.. the questions and answers should stay together and be explicit because.... what if it was a dating service? and male could be an answer for a person's own gender or the gender they want to date and by doing question='gender' and answer in ('male','female') you are specifying exactly what you mean and not assuming that certain information is only a valid answer for one question.

Related

How to avoid duplicates in following SQL scenario

I have a table called LIKES as follows.
As you can see it is having two columns. UserName1, UserName2.
What this table contains is that, If one person follow other persons facebook page etc.
For example, If Jon follow bobs page then there is a entry in the table as Jon, bob, If bob follows Jon facebook page, then there is a entry called Bob, Jon.
So I want to find out all the users who are following each others profile and I want it without duplicates.
I have following query, which give results of finding users who follow each others profile. but I am not able to remove duplicates
SELECT L1.USERNAME1, L2.USERNAME2
FROM LIKES L1,
LIKES L2
WHERE L1.USERNAME1=L2.USERNAME2
AND L1.USERNAME2=L2.USERNAME1
Final output from the given table should be Jon Bob, or Bob , Jon, not the both.
my query gives the both results, How can I remove the duplicates in the resluts
First, don't use comma-style joins. That syntax has been outdated for a long time. Second, one way you can avoid duplicates in this case is to require that the first name you report in your result set occur before the first alphabetically. You can do this safely because any pair of names that will appear in your result set must appear in the source table in both orders (e.g. ("Bob", "Jon") and ("Jon", "Bob")). I am assuming here that you don't need to deal with the case of a user who follows his own page. For instance:
select *
from likes L1
where
L1.username1 < L1.username2 and
exists (select 1 from likes L2 where L1.username1 = L2.username2 and L1.username2 = L2.username1);
Result:
username1 username2
Bob Jon
Click here for a SQL fiddle that demonstrates this approach using your sample data.
It looks a little crazy, but this actually works:
select min(t.username1) as username1,
max(t.username2) as username2
from likes t
group by least(t.username1, t.username2),
greatest(t.username1, t.username2)
having count(distinct t.username1) = 2
SQLFiddle
EDIT Added the having clause to deal with my misunderstanding of OP's question

Mysql IN condition for and operations

I have expertise table that have user id and expertise id. Each user might have multiple expertise. Now I want to get all users that must have all expertise in range, like (1,2,3,4,5,......so on).
IN condition is only used for OR operation so how can I get expected result lets say by using IN condition with AND operation. Or is there any other operator or trick that can be used.
EDIT:
Let me add bit more explanation. Customer select expertise like physics, math, chemistry ...... and so on. So I have expertise and I need to get all user ids from expertise table that satisfy all selected expertise. So I need user who is well versed in math, physics, chemistry and so on.
All data is in one expertise table.
Current query is like this
Select user_id from expertise where expertise_id IN (1,2,3,4)
but this is true for all user who have one of these expertise but I need all users who have all these expertise.
If I understand correctly you want all the user_id returning which have all the expertise (and possibly more) that are in the IN clause.
If so select the users_id, GROUP BY the user id and COUNT the DISTINCT expertise id that match. Return the users_id for those where the count is the same as the number of ids you are searching for.
SELECT user_id
FROM expertise
WHERE expertise_id IN (1,2,3,4)
GROUP BY user_id
HAVING COUNT(DISTINCT expertise_id) = 4
You could verify the number of expertises that match your list, and require that this number equals the size of your list. Here is an example, for when your list of required expertises has 5 elements:
SELECT *
FROM users
WHERE 5 = (SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT expertise_id)
FROM user_expertises
WHERE user_id = users.user_id
AND expertise_id IN (1, 2, 3, 13, 18))
The DISTINCT expertise_id can be replaced by a simple * if it is certain that the user_expertise table has no duplicate (user_id, expertise_id) pairs.
Of course, you'll have to use the proper table names and columns names. This is just a template.

mySQL - use an outer query value as a column name for a subquery

I have one table that holds exam questions; another table that holds exam answers.
I want to develop a query that will list the exam questions, and the most common answer for each one.
The relevant parts of the questions table is like this:
name question_text
ex1_qs1 1. What is furry and has four legs?
ex1_qs2 2. What is hairless and has two legs?
The relevant parts of the responses table is like this:
session_id ex1_qs1 ex1_qs2
123456789 cat man
112233445 dog woman
111222333 dog woman
I know I can get the list of questions like this:
Select name, question_text
From questions
Order By LENGTH(name), name
And the most common response for each question like this:
SELECT ex1_qs1
FROM responses
GROUP BY ex1_qs1
ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC LIMIT 1
But I'm not seeing how to put it all together as a subquery, since the column name that I need for the subquery is a value from the main query. I can't hardcode this as a bunch of UNIONs either.
What do I use below instead of the hardcoded "ex1_qs1" (since I need to use the value of the "name" field in the outer query)? Or is there another approach needed?
Select name, question_text, (SELECT ex1_qs1 FROM responses GROUP BY ex1_qs1 ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC LIMIT 1) as most_common_response
From questions
Order By LENGTH(name), name

Selecting specific records to run query on

I am trying to select a small number of records in a somewhat large database and run some queries on them.
I am incredibly new to programming so I am pretty well lost.
What I need to do is select all records where the Registraton# column equals a certain number, and then run the query on just those results.
I can put up what the db looks like and a more detailed explanation if needed, although I think it may be something simple that I am just missing.
Filtering records in a database is done with the WHERE clause.
Example, if you wanted to get all records from a Persons table, where the FirstName = 'David"
SELECT
FirstName,
LastName,
MiddleInitial,
BirthDate,
NumberOfChildren
FROM
Persons
WHERE
FirstName = 'David'
Your question indicates you've figured this much out, but are just missinbg the next piece.
If you need to query within the results of the above result set to only include people with more than two children, you'd just add to your WHERE clause using the AND keyword.
SELECT
FirstName,
LastName,
MiddleInitial,
BirthDate,
NumberOfChildren
FROM
Persons
WHERE
FirstName = 'David'
AND
NumberOfChildren > 3
Now, there ARE some situations where you really need to use a subquery. For example:
Assuming that each person has a PersonId and each person has a FatherId that corresponds to another person's PersonId...
PersonId FirstName LastName FatherId...
1 David Stratton 0
2 Matthew Stratton 1
Select FirstName,
LastName
FROM
Person
WHERE
FatherId IN (Select PersonId
From Person
WHERE FirstName = 'David')
Would return all of the children with a Father named David. (Using the sample data, Matthew would be returned.)
http://www.w3schools.com/sql/sql_where.asp
Would this be any use to you?
SELECT * from table_name WHERE Regestration# = number
I do not know what you have done up to now, but I imagine that you have a SQL query somewhere like
SELECT col1, col2, col3
FROM table
Append a where clause
SELECT col1, col2, col3
FROM table
WHERE "Registraton#" = number
See SO question SQL standard to escape column names?.
Try this:
SELECT *
FROM tableName
WHERE RegistrationNo = 'valueHere'
I am not certain about my solution. I would propose You to use view. You create view based on needed records. Then make needed queries and then you can delete the view.
View description: A view contains rows and columns, just like a real table. The fields in a view are fields from one or more real tables in the database.
Example:
CREATE VIEW view_name AS
SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table_name
WHERE condition
For more information: http://www.w3schools.com/sql/sql_view.asp

Finding and dealing with duplicate users

In a large user database with the following format and sample data, we are trying to identify duplicated people:
id first_name last_name email
---------------------------------------------------
1 chris baker
2 chris baker chris#gmail.com
3 chris baker chris#hotmail.com
4 chris baker crayzyguy#crazy.com
5 carl castle castle#npr.org
6 mike rotch fakeuser#sample.com
I am using the following query:
SELECT
GROUP_CONCAT(id) AS "ids",
CONCAT(UPPER(first_name), UPPER(last_name)) AS "name",
COUNT(*) AS "duplicate_count"
FROM
users
GROUP BY
name
HAVING
duplicate_count > 1
This works great; I get a list of duplicates with the id numbers of the involved rows.
We would re-assign any associated data tied to a duplicate to the actual person (set user_id = 2 where user_id = 3), then we delete the duplicating user row.
The trouble comes after we make this report the first time, as we clean up the list after manually verifying that they are indeed duplicates -- some ARE NOT duplicates. There are 2 Chris Bakers that are legitimate users.
We don't want to keep seeing Chris Baker in subsequent duplicate reports until the end of time, so I am looking for a way to flag that user id 1 and user id 4 are NOT duplicates of each other for future reports, but they could be duplicated by new users added later.
What I tried
I added a is_not_duplicate field to the user table, but then if a new duplicate "Chris Baker" gets added to the database, it will cause this situation to not show on the duplicate report; the is_not_duplicate improperly excludes one of the accounts. My HAVING statement would not meet the > 1 threshold until there are -two- duplicates of Chris Baker, plus the "real" one marked is_not_duplicate.
Question Summed Up
How can I build exceptions into the above query without looping results or multiple queries?
Sub-queries are fine, but the size of the dataset makes every query count and I'd like the solution to be as performant as possible.
Try to add the is_not_duplicate boolean field and modify your code as follows:
SELECT
GROUP_CONCAT(id) AS "ids",
CONCAT(UPPER(first_name), UPPER(last_name)) AS "name",
COUNT(*) AS "duplicate_count",
SUM(is_not_duplicate) AS "real_count"
FROM
users
GROUP BY
name
HAVING
duplicate_count > 1
AND
duplicate_count - real_count > 0
Newly added duplicates will have is_not_duplicate=0 so the real_count for that name will be less than duplicate_count and the row will be shown
My brain is too fried to come up with the actual query for this at the moment, but I might be able to give you a nudge in a path that should work :)
What if you did add another column (maybe a table of valid duplicated users instead?...both will accomplish the same thing), and ran a subquery that would count up all of the valid duplicates and then you could compare against the count in your current query. You would exclude any users that have matching counts, and would pull in any with counts that are higher. Hopefully that makes sense; I will create a use case:
Chris Baker with id 1 and 4 are marked as valid_duplicates
There are 4 Chris Baker's in the system
You get a count of valid Chris Baker's
You get a count of all Chris Baker's
valid_count <> total_count, so return Chris Baker
*You probably can even modify the query so that it does not even list the duplicate id's (even if you get a duplicate marking of only 1 id). Rather than having to re-check which are the valids. This would be a little more complicated. Without it, at least you ignore Chris Baker until another enters the system
I have written up the basic query, dealing with excluding specific id's I will try to roll in tonight. But, this at least solves your initial need. If you do not need the more complicated query, do let me know so that I do not waste my time on it :)
SELECT
GROUP_CONCAT(id) AS "ids",
CONCAT(UPPER(first_name), UPPER(last_name)) AS "name",
COUNT(*) AS "duplicate_count"
FROM
users
WHERE NOT EXISTS
(
SELECT 1
FROM
(
SELECT
CONCAT(UPPER(first_name), UPPER(last_name)) AS "name",
COUNT(*) AS "valid_duplicate_count"
FROM
users
WHERE
is_valid_duplicate = 1 --true
GROUP BY
name
HAVING
valid_duplicate_count > 1
) AS duplicate_users
WHERE
duplicate_users.name = users.name
AND valid_duplicate_count = duplicate_count
)
GROUP BY
name
HAVING
duplicate_count > 1
Below is the query that should do the same as above, but the final list will only print the id's that are not in the valid list. This actually ended up being a lot simpler than I thought. And, it is mostly the same as above, but the only reason I kept above is to keep the two options and in case I messed the above up...it does get complicated as it is many nested queries. If CTE's are available to you, or even temp tables. It might make the query more expressive to break it up into temp tables :). Hopefully this helps and is what you are looking for
SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(id) AS "ids",
CONCAT(UPPER(first_name), UPPER(last_name)) AS "name",
COUNT(*) AS "final_duplicate_count"
--This count could actually be 1 due to the nature of the query
FROM
users
--get the list of duplicated user names
WHERE EXISTS
(
SELECT
CONCAT(UPPER(first_name), UPPER(last_name)) AS "name",
COUNT(*) AS "total_duplicate_count"
FROM
users AS total_dup_users
--ignore valid_users whose count still matches
WHERE NOT EXISTS
(
SELECT 1
FROM
(
SELECT
CONCAT(UPPER(first_name), UPPER(last_name)) AS "name",
COUNT(*) AS "valid_duplicate_count"
FROM
users AS valid_users
WHERE
is_valid_duplicate = 1 --true
GROUP BY
name
HAVING
valid_duplicate_count > 1
) AS duplicate_users
WHERE
--join inner table to outer table
duplicate_users.name = total_dup_users.name
--valid count check
AND valid_duplicate_count = total_duplicate_count
)
--join inner table to outer table
AND total_dup_users.Name = users.Name
GROUP BY
name
HAVING
duplicate_count > 1
)
--ignore users that are valid when doing the actual counts
AND NOT EXISTS
(
SELECT 1
FROM users AS valid
WHERE
--join inner table to outer table
users.name =
CONCAT(UPPER(valid.first_name), UPPER(valid.last_name))
--only valid users
AND valid.is_valid_duplicate = 1 --true
)
GROUP BY
FinalDuplicates.Name
Since this is basically a many-to-many relationship I would add a new table not_duplicate with fields user1 and user2.
I would probably add two rows for each not_duplicate relationship such that I have one row for 2 -> 3 and a symmetric row for 3 -> 2 to ease querying, but that may introduce data inconsistencies so make sure you delete both rows at the same time (or have only one row and make the correct query in your script).
well it seems to me that the is_not_duplicate column is not complex enough to hold the information you want to store - from what I understand you want to manually tell your detection that two distinct users are not duplicates of each other. so either you create a column like is_not_duplicate_of=other-user-id or if you want to keep the possibility open that one user can be manually defined not duplicate of more than one users, you need a seperate table with two user-id columns.
the query telling you the non overridden duplicates probably has to be a bit more complex than the one you suggested, I cannot think of one that works with a group by and having logic. The only thing that would come to my mind is something like
SELECT u1.* FROM users u1
INNER JOIN users u2
ON u1.id <> u2.id
AND u2.name = u1.name
WHERE NOT EXISTS (
SELECT *
FROM users_non_dups un
WHERE (un.id1 = u1.id AND un.id2 = u2.id)
OR (un.id1 = u2.id AND un.id2 = u1.id)
)
If you were to correct all duplicates each time you run the report, then a very simple solution might be to modify the query:
SELECT
GROUP_CONCAT(id) AS "ids",
MAX(id) AS "max_id",
CONCAT(UPPER(first_name), UPPER(last_name)) AS "name",
COUNT(*) AS "duplicate_count"
FROM
users
GROUP BY
name
HAVING
duplicate_count > 1
AND
max_id > MAX_ID_LAST_TIME_DUPLICATE_REPORT_WAS_GENERATED;
I would go ahead and make the "confirmed_unique" column, defaulted as "False."
In order to avoid the problems you mentioned,
Then I would select all elements that may look like duplicates and have a "False" entry for "confirmed_unique."
I am not sure if this will work, but could you consider the reverse logic of adding a *is_duplicate_of* column? That way you can mark duplicates by entering the ID of the first record at this column which will be greater than zero. The records that you wish to retain will have a 0 value at this field. You can set the default (unchecked records) to -1 to keep track of the validation status for each record.
Afterwards you can keep executing an SQL that will compare new records only with correct records having is_duplicate_of = 0 .
If you are ok to make a slight change to the format of the report. You could do a self-join like this -
SELECT
CONCAT(u1.id,",", u2.id) AS "ids",
CONCAT(UPPER(u1.first_name), UPPER(u1.last_name)) AS "name"
FROM
users u1, users u2
WHERE
u1.id < u2.id AND
UPPER(u1.first_name) = UPPER(u2.first_name) AND
UPPER(u1.last_name) = UPPER(u2.last_name) AND
CONCAT(u1.id,",", u2.id) NOT IN (SELECT ids from not_dupe)
which reports duplicates as follows:
ids | name
----|--------
1,2 | CHRISBAKER
1,3 | CHRISBAKER
...
And the not_dupe table would have rows like below:
ids
------
1,2
3,4
...
I think it would make sense to create a lookup-table storing the ids of the ones that are not duplicates. Thus confirmed non duplicants are removed and the query will only have to ad a small look up for duplicates actualy found on the lookup table.
for instance in this example we would have
id 1 | id 2
2 4
if crayzyguy#crazy.com and chris#gmail.com are diffrent persons.
If I were you, I will add some geolocalisation tables/fields to my database schema.
The probability two end-users are having the same names AND are living in the same place is very very low - except in very big town - but you can split geolocalization to small areas too - it's about granularity.
Good luck.
I would suggest you to create a couple of things:
A Boolean column to flag confirmed users
A String column to save ids
A trigger that will check if the first name and last name are already there to fill up the flag, and save in the string column all ids to which this one is a possible duplicate.
And then build a report that looks for duplicated true and decode the string field to match the possible duplicated
I gave Justin Pihony +1 as the 1st to suggest comparing the duplicate count with the not duplicate count, and Hrant Khachatrian +1 for being the 1st to show an efficient way of doing that.
Here is a slightly different method, plus some renaming to make everything a bit more self explanatory, plus some extra columns in the query to make it obvious which records need to be compared as potential duplicates.
I would call the new column "CONFIRMED_UNIQUE" instead of "IS_NOT_DUPLICATE". Like Hrant I would make it Boolean (tinyint(1) with 0=FALSE and 1=TRUE).
The "potential_duplicate_count" is the maximum number of records that would have to be deleted.
select
group_concat(case when not confirmed_unique then id end) as potential_duplicate_ids,
group_concat(case when confirmed_unique then id end) as confirmed_unique_ids,
concat(upper(first_name), upper(last_name)) as name,
sum( case when not confirmed_unique then 1 end ) - (not max(confirmed_unique)) as potential_duplicate_count
from
users
group by
name
having
potential_duplicate_count > 0
I see someone else has been voted down for the suggestion of merging, but nothing about your problem statement says the data needs to be inplace. The OP followed up with their solution which happens to be a put SQL one, that doesn't imply that every solution needs to be limited to that.
The issue as I understand is around contacts having multiple, similar, but not necessarily identical records in your database, which has cost and reputational implications so you're looking to deduplicate these records.
I would write a batch job that searches for potential duplicates (this can be as complicated or as simple as you like) and then close the two records that it finds are dupes and create a new record.
To enable that you'd need four new columns:
Status, which would be either Open, Merged, Split
RelatedId, which would hold the value of who the record was merged with
ChainId, the new record Id
DateStatusChanged, obvious enough
Open would be the default status
Merged would be when the record is merged (effectively closed and replaced)
Split would be if the merge was reversed
So, as an example, go through all of the records that, for example, have the same name. Merge them in pairs. So if you have three Chris Bakers, records 1, 2 and 3, merge 1 and 2 to make record 4 and then 3 and 4 to make record 5. Your table would end up something like:
ID NAME STATUS RELATEDID CHAINID DATESTATUSCHANGED [other rows omitted]
1 Chris Baker MERGED 2 4 27-AUG-2012
2 Chris Baker MERGED 1 4 27-AUG-2012
3 Chris Baker MERGED 4 5 28-AUG-2012
4 Chris Baker MERGED 3 5 28-AUG-2012
5 Chris Baker OPEN
This way you have a full record of what has happened to your data can reverse any changes by unmerging, if for example contacts 1 and 2 weren't the same you reverse the merge of 3 and 4, reverse the merge of 1 and 2, you'd end up with this:
ID NAME STATUS RELATEDID CHAINID DATESTATUSCHANGED
1 Chris Baker SPLIT 2 4 29-AUG-2012
2 Chris Baker SPLIT 1 4 29-AUG-2012
3 Chris Baker SPLIT 4 5 29-AUG-2012
4 Chris Baker CLOSED 3 5 29-AUG-2012
5 Chris Baker CLOSED 29-AUG-2012
You could then manually merge, as you'd probably not want your job to automatically remerge split records.
Is there a good reason for not merging duplicate accounts into a single account?
From the comments, it seems like the information is being used mostly for contact information so merging should be relatively painless and low risk. Once you merge users they will no longer appear in your duplicate report. Furthermore, you users table will actually shrink which could help with performance.
Add is_not_duplicate by datatype bit to your table and use below query after set is_not_duplicate data value:
SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(id) AS "ids",
CONCAT(UPPER(first_name), UPPER(last_name)) AS "name"
FROM users
GROUP BY name
HAVING COUNT(*) > SUM(CAST(is_not_duplicate AS INT))
above query compare total duplicate rows by total valid duplicate rows.
Why don't you make the email column to be a unique identifier in this case, and after you cleanse your records once, you do not allow duplicates from there onwards?