Mysql join on 3 tables output - mysql

Question

I am learning joins and have the following tables.
Student
| ID | NAME |
-------------
| 1 | A |
| 2 | B |
| 3 | C |
| 4 | D |
Pass
| ID | MARKS |
--------------
| 2 | 80 |
| 3 | 75 |
Fail
| ID | MARKS |
--------------
| 1 | 25 |
| 4 | 20 |
The output I want is this:
| NAME | MARKS |
----------------
| B | 80 |
| C | 75 |
| A | 25 |
| D | 20 |
I wrote a query like this:
select s.id,s.name,p.marks from student s
left join pass p on s.id=p.id
left join (select f.marks,f.id from fail f ) as nn on s.id=nn.id
order by marks desc;
The output I got is this:
| id | name | Marks|
--------------------
| 1 | B | 80 |
| 2 | C | 75 |
| 3 | A | Null |
| 4 | D | NUll |
Cant figure out why Null is coming. Any pointers?

Answer 1

You can use CASE statement for that:
SELECT Name,
CASE WHEN P.Marks IS NULL THEN f.Marks ELSE P.Marks END AS Marks
FROM Student s
LEFT JOIN Pass p ON s.ID = p.ID
LEFT JOIN Fail f ON s.ID = f.ID
ORDER BY Marks DESC;
Or you can also use IF statement:
SELECT Name,
IF(P.Marks IS NULL, F.Marks, P.Marks) AS Marks
FROM Student s
LEFT JOIN Pass p ON s.ID = p.ID
LEFT JOIN Fail f ON s.ID = f.ID
ORDER BY Marks DESC;
Output
| NAME | MARKS |
----------------
| B | 80 |
| C | 75 |
| A | 25 |
| D | 20 |
See this SQLFiddle
To learn more about JOINs see: A Visual Explanation of SQL Joins

Answer 2

You select only the passed marks, this is the reason of null-s appears near falied results.
If you want to select the failed marks you can use IF condition
select s.id,s.name,IF(p.marks = null, nn.marks, p.marks) as markss
from student s
left join pass p on s.id=p.id
left join fail nn on s.id=nn.id
order by markss desc;
Or you can use union of the passed and failed results.
select s.id,s.name, u.marks
from student s
left join ( (SELECT * FROM pass) UNION (SELECT * FROM fail) ) as n ON n.id = s.id
order by marks desc;

Answer 3

You need to understand how the different joins work to understand why you receive NULL for the marks column.
Take a look here:A Visual Explanation of SQL Joins
The relevant example for you is:
LEFT OUTER JOIN:
SELECT * FROM TableA
LEFT OUTER JOIN TableB
ON TableA.name = TableB.name
id name id name
-- ---- -- ----
1 Pirate 2 Pirate
2 Monkey null null
3 Ninja 4 Ninja
4 Spaghetti null null
The Null values you received for the marks column are rows that have no match in the left joined tables.
(the left part of the Venn diagram) the values that does have a value are the cross section between the tow groups of the Venn Diagram.
specifics for your example:
select s.id,s.name,p.marks
from student s
left join pass p on s.id=p.id
left join (select f.marks,f.id from fail f ) as nn on s.id=nn.id
order by marks desc;
The output i got is this:
id | name | Marks
-------------------
1 | B | 80
2 | C | 75
3 | A | Null
4 | D | NUll
This will return all student rows when.
students that have a passing gtade will display the grade and thous who don't will display null.

Answer 4

Try the below Query, use COALESCE
select s.id,s.name,COALESCE(p.marks , nn.marks) as marks
from student s
left join pass p on s.id=p.id
left join fail nn on s.id=nn.id
order by marks desc;
SQL Fiddle