Combining data from multiple tables issue Oracle 11g - sql

Question

TABLE // FIELD
Customer // Company
Stock // Description
Manufact // Manu_Name
Items // Quantity, total_price
I am using Oracle 11g Application Express. I need to display a list of each stock ordered for EACH CUSTOMER. I need to display the Manufacturer, quantity ordered, and total price paid.
When I run this query within my SQL*PLUS command prompt, it endlessly displays results from the tables mentioned until I force-quit (ctrl+c) the application. This is incredibly frustrating - I've tried joining tables, using the EXISTS clause, I just don't know what the hell to do. Any insight would be wonderful - not looking for someone to simply solve this for me, more-so just guide me.
SELECT c.company, s.description, m.manu_name, i.quantity, i.total_price
FROM db1.customer c JOIN db1.orders o USING (customer_num), db1.stock s, db1.manufact m, db1.items i
WHERE o.order_num = i.order_num;
This causes a never-ending display of what seems like the same results, over, and over, and over.
Essentially, I need to display the required information for EACH ORDER of stock. However, I don't need the order_num in my output display of columns, so I thought I needed to use the order_num (in db1.orders o & db1.items i) to essentially tell Oracle, "For each order_num (an order can't exist without an order_num), display (results)...
I am incredibly lost - I've tried outer joins, I've tried using an EXIST operator, I am just stumped and I feel like it's something easy that I'm overlooking.
EDIT: So, it seems I finally found it, after an enormous amount of pondering.
This is how I did it, in case anyone else runs into this issue:
SELECT c.company, s.description, m.manu_name, i.quantity, i.total_price
FROM db1.customer c JOIN db1.orders o USING (customer_num)
JOIN db1.items i USING (order_num)
JOIN db1.stock USING (stock_num)
JOIN db1.manufact m ON m.manu_code = s.manu_code
ORDER BY c.company, s.description;
If you JOIN db1.manufact m USING (manu_code), you get an ambiguously defined column error from Oracle - this is because I already joined the other tables and that column was in one of them (It was the db1.stock table). You can still join them, but you have to use JOIN ON instead.
This displayed the results I needed. Thanks anyways, and cheers if this helped anybody out!

Answer 1

You've only provided two joins (one USING and one in the WHERE) between 5 tables - in this case, you will get the cartesian product of all other rows in all other tables, hence the large number of rows.
(Edit, by implication you need to join all tables together, whether by USING or JOIN)
In order to use the USING join sugar, the same column must be present on the immediate lhs and rhs tables. For multiple joins, into a hierarchy, you may need to nest the USINGs like so:
SELECT c.company, s.description, m.manu_name, i.quantity, i.total_price
FROM customer c
JOIN orders o
JOIN stock s
JOIN items i
JOIN manufact m USING(manid)
USING(itemid)
USING (stockid)
USING (customer_num);
There where join isn't needed since we already have the USING join
I've assumed some columns and relationships between your table in this fiddle here:
You can also drop the USING and use explicit JOIN syntax, which will allow you to avoid the nesting (this is also more portable across the ANSI world):
SELECT c.company, s.description, m.manu_name, i.quantity, i.total_price
FROM customer c
INNER JOIN orders o on c.customer_num = o.customer_num
INNER JOIN stock s on o.stockid = s.stockid
INNER JOIN items i on i.itemid = s.itemid
INNER JOIN manufact m on m.manid = i.manid;
Edit
As OP has demonstrated, no requirement to nest the USING joins, provided that the join ordering is sensible, and provided that the FK JOIN column isn't duplicated across multiple tables.
http://sqlfiddle.com/#!4/91ef6/9