Self JOIN to find the parent detail which matches with the row data - - sql

Question

I am trying to query in MS SQL and I can not resolve it. I have a table employees:
Id Name Surname FatherName MotherName WifeName Pincode isChild
-- ------- ------- ---------- ---------- -------- ------- -------
1 John Green James Sue null 101011 1
2 Michael Sloan Barry Lilly null 101011 1
3 Sally Green Andrew Molly Jemi 101011 1
4 Barry Sloan Soul Paul Lilly 101011 0
5 James Green Ned White Sue 101011 0
I want a query that selects rows where the father name and mother name of child matches with name and wife name. For the example table, where I want to return the result of rows where father and mother name matches the name and wife name column. For eg. id=1, where John's father name James and mother name Sue matches with id 5 which returns James as first name and Sue as wife name. So my query should return (this is my expected result)
Id Name Surname FatherName MotherName WifeName Pincode isChild
-- ------- ------- ---------- ---------- -------- ------- -------
5 James Green Ned White Sue 101011 0
4 Barry Sloan Soul Paul Lilly 101011 0
I tried with the below query but it checks for James only. How to change my query so that it checks all the names and returns the expected result.
select * FROM employees
where first_name like '%James%'
and wife_name like '%Sue%'
and pincode=101011;
Any tips on this will be really helpful. I am new to joins, need help on writing self join to get the result.

Answer 1

…
select *
from thetable as p -- the parent/father
where exists -- with one child at least
(
select *
from thetable as c
where c.fathername = p.name
and c.mothername = p.wifename
-- lastname?
)

Answer 2

Too long for a comment, but also not intended as a slam against what you are working with. Please take as constructive criticism.
Aside from VERY POOR DESIGN on the table content, getting that corrected before you get too deep into whatever you are working should be done first. A more typical design might be having a table of people. Now, to get the relationships you could do a couple ways. One is that on each individual person's record, you add 2 additional IDs. FatherID, MotherID. These IDs would join directly back to the child vs hard strings to match against. Take a surname like Smith or Jones. Then, look at the many instances of a "John Smith" may exist, yes a lot, and lower probability of finding a matching wife's name of Sue, Mary or whatever else name. But even that could lead to multiple possibilities. Yes, you are adding a PIN, but even a computer can generate a random pin of 1234.
By having the IDs, there is NO ambiguity of who the relationship is with.
If the data were slightly altered to something like
Id Name Surname FatherID MotherID SpouseID
-- ------- ------- ---------- ---------- --------
1 John Green 5 6 null
2 Michael Sloan 4 3 null
3 Lilly Sloan null null 4
4 Barry Sloan null null 3
5 James Green 9 10 6
6 Sue Green 7 8 5
7 Bill Jones null null 8
8 Martha Jones null null 7
9 Brian Green null null 10
10 Beth Smith-Green null null 9
So, in this modified example, you can see right away that ID#1 John Green has parents of Father (ID#5) is James and Mother (ID#6) is Sue. But even from this, James is a child to Father (ID#9) Brian and Mother (ID#10) Beth. This scenario is showing to a grand-parent level capacity and that each of James and Sue are also children but to their respective parents. Sue's parents of the Jones surname.
For Michael Sloan, parents of #4 Barry, and #3 Lilly.
And I additionally added a spouse ID. This prevents redundancy of people's names copied all over. Then you can query based on the child's parent's respective IDs to find out vs a hopeful name LIKE guess.
So, even though not solving a relatively simple query, fixing the underlying foundation of your database and is relations will, long-term, help ease your querying in the future.

Answer 3

Try this:
SELECT
T2.*
FROM Employee T1
JOIN Employee T2 ON T2.Name = T1.FatherName
AND T2.WifeName = T1.MotherName