Query sql to get the first occurrence in a many to many relationship - sql

Question

I have a User table that has a many to many relationship with Areas. This relationship is stored in the Rel_User_area table. I want to show the user name and the first area that appears in the list of areas.
Ex.
User
id | Name
1 | Peter
2 | Joe
Area
id | Name
1 | Area A
2 | Area B
3 | Area C
Rel_User_area
iduser | idarea
1 | 1
1 | 3
2 | 3
The result I want:
User Name | Area
Peter |Area A
Joe |Area C

Answer 1

Using the minimum area id to determine "First" you could use a correlated subquery (A subquery that refers to field(s) in the main query to filter results):
SELECT user.name, area.name
FROM
user
INNER JOIN Rel_User_Area RUA ON user.id = RUA.iduser
INNER JOIN Area ON RUA.idarea = area.id
WHERE area.id = (SELECT min(idarea) FROM Rel_User_Area WHERE iduser = RUA.iduser)
There's other ways of doing this that may be RDBMS specific. Like in Teradata I would use a QUALIFY clause that doesn't exist in MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, Postgres, etc.. Regardless of the RDBMS the above should work.
SELECT user.name, area.name
FROM
user
INNER JOIN Rel_User_Area RUA ON user.id = RUA.iduser
INNER JOIN Area ON RUA.idarea = area.id
QUALIFY ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY user.id ORDER BY area.id ASC) = 1;

Answer 2

using the ID from Rel_user_Area you mentioned in comments...
This should be pretty platform independent.
SELECT U.name as Username, A.Name as Area
FROM (SELECT min(ID) minID, IDUser, IDarea
FROM Rel_user_Area
GROUP BY IDUser, IDarea) UA
INNER JOIN User U
on U.ID = UA.IDuser
INNER JOIN Area A
on A.ID = UA.IDArea
If Cross apply and top work (could substitute limit 1 vs top if Postgresql or mySQL)
This will run the cross apply SQL once for each record in user; thus you get the most recent rel_user_Area ID per user.
SELECT U.name as Username, A.Name as Area
FROM User U
on U.ID = UA.IDuser
CROSS APPLY (SELECT TOP 1 IDUser, IDArea
FROM Rel_user_Area z
WHERE Z.IDUSER = U.ID
ORDER BY ID ASC) UA
INNER JOIN Area A
on A.ID = UA.IDArea