Alright well I recently got into normalizing my database for this little side project that I have been creating for a while now, but I've just hit a brick wall. I'll try to give an understandable example of what I have and what I need to accomplish ― and hopefully it won't be too painful. OK.
I have 3 tables the first one we will call Shows, structured something like this:
+----+--------------------------+
| id | title |
+----+--------------------------+
| 1 | Example #1 |
| 2 | Example #2 |
| 3 | Example #3 |
+----+--------------------------+
Plain and simple.
My next table is called Categories, and lookes like this:
+----+--------------------------+
| id | category |
+----+--------------------------+
| 1 | Comedy |
| 2 | Drama |
| 3 | Action |
+----+--------------------------+
And a final table called Show_categories:
+---------+---------+
| show_id | cat_id |
+---------+---------+
| 1 | 1 |
| 1 | 3 |
| 2 | 2 |
| 2 | 3 |
| 3 | 1 |
| 3 | 2 |
+---------+---------+
As you may have noticed the problem is the in my database a single show can have multiple categories. Everything is structured fine, except for the fact that I can't find a why to search for show with multiple categories.
If I were to search for action and comedy type shows I would be given Example #1, but it is not possible (at least with my queries), because the cat_id's inside the Show_categories are in different rows.
Example of a working single category search (Selecting all comedy shows):
SELECT s.id,s.title
FROM Shows s JOIN Show_categories sc ON sc.anid=s.id
WHERE sc.cat_id=1 GROUP BY s.id
And a query that is impossible (because cat_id can't equal 2 different things):
SELECT s.id,s.title
FROM Shows s JOIN Show_categories sc ON sc.anid=s.id
WHERE sc.cat_id=1 AND sc.cat_id=2 GROUP BY s.id
So to sum things up what I am asking is how do I handle a query where I am looking for a show based on multiple matching categories.
Use:
SELECT s.id,
s.title
FROM SHOWS s
JOIN SHOW_CATEGORIES sc ON sc.anid = s.id
WHERE sc.cat_id IN (1, 2)
GROUP BY s.id, s.title
HAVING COUNT(DISTINCT sc.cat_id) = 2
The COUNT(DISTINCT sc.cat_id) comparison needs to equal the number of cat_id values listed in the IN clause. But if both the SHOW_CATEGORIES show_id and cat_id columns are either the primary key, or there's a unique constraint on both columns -- then you can use COUNT(sc.cat_id).
You need an OR statement.
SELECT s.id,s.title
FROM Shows s JOIN Show_categories sc ON sc.anid=s.id
WHERE sc.cat_id=1 OR sc.cat_id=2 GROUP BY s.id
That is, you want all shows with either catid 1 OR catid 2. So this query will return 1, 2 and 3.
Related
I want to join tables in MS Access in such a way that it fetches only the latest record from one of the tables. I've looked at the other solutions available on the site, but discovered that they only work for other versions of SQL. Here is a simplified version of my data:
PatientInfo Table:
+-----+------+
| ID | Name |
+-----+------+
| 1 | John |
| 2 | Tom |
| 3 | Anna |
+-----+------+
Appointments Table
+----+-----------+
| ID | Date |
+----+-----------+
| 1 | 5/5/2001 |
| 1 | 10/5/2012 |
| 1 | 4/20/2018 |
| 2 | 4/5/1999 |
| 2 | 8/8/2010 |
| 2 | 4/9/1982 |
| 3 | 7/3/1997 |
| 3 | 6/4/2015 |
| 3 | 3/4/2017 |
+----+-----------+
And here is a simplified version of the results that I need after the join:
+----+------+------------+
| ID | Name | Date |
+----+------+------------+
| 1 | John | 4/20/2018 |
| 2 | Tom | 8/8/2010 |
| 3 | Anna | 3/4/2017 |
+----+------+------------+
Thanks in advance for reading and for your help.
You can use aggregation and JOIN:
select pi.id, pi.name, max(a.date)
from appointments as a inner join
patientinfo as pi
on a.id = pi.id
group by pi.id, pi.name;
something like this:
select P.ID, P.name, max(A.Date) as Dt
from PatientInfo P inner join Appointments A
on P.ID=A.ID
group by P.ID, P.name
Both Bing and Gordon's answers work if your summary table only needs one field (the Max(Date)) but gets more tricky if you also want to report other fields from the joined table, since you would need to include them either as an aggregated field or group by them as well.
Eg if you want your summary to also include the assessment they were given at their last appointment, GROUP BY is not the way to go.
A more versatile structure may be something like
SELECT Patient.ID, Patient.Name, Appointment.Date, Appointment.Assessment
FROM Patient INNER JOIN Appointment ON Patient.ID=Appointment.ID
WHERE Appointment.Date = (SELECT Max(Appointment.Date) FROM Appointment WHERE Appointment.ID = Patient.ID)
;
As an aside, you may want to think whether you should use a field named 'ID' to refer to the ID of another table (in this case, the Apppintment.ID field refers to the Patient.ID). You may make your db more readable if you leave the 'ID' field as an identifier specific to that table and refer to that field in other tables as OtherTableID or similar, ie PatientID in this case. Or go all the way and include the name of the actual table in its own ID field.
Edited after comment:
Not quite sure why it would crash. I just ran an equivalent query on 2 tables I have which are about 10,000 records each and it was pretty instanteneous. Are your ID fields (i) unique numbers and (ii) indexed?
Another structure which should do the same thing (adapted for your field names and assuming that there is an ID field in Appointments which is unique) would be something like:
SELECT PatientInfo.UID, PatientInfo.Name, Appointments.StartDateTime, Appointments.Assessment
FROM PatientInfo INNER JOIN Appointments ON PatientInfo_UID = Appointments.PatientFID
WHERE Appointments.ID = (SELECT TOP 1 ID FROM Appointments WHERE Appointments.PatientFID = PatientInfo_UID ORDER BY StartDateTime DESC)
;
But that is starting to look a bit contrived. On my data they both produce the same result (as they should!) and are both almost instantaneous.
Always difficult to troubleshoot Access when it crashes - I guess you see no error codes or similar? Is this against a native .accdb database or another server?
I have tables below as follows:
tbl_tasks
+---------+-------------+
| Task_ID | Assigned_ID |
+---------+-------------+
| 1 | 8 |
| 2 | 12 |
| 3 | 31 |
+---------+-------------+
tbl_resources
+---------+-----------+
| Task_ID | Source_ID |
+---------+-----------+
| 1 | 4 |
| 1 | 10 |
| 2 | 42 |
| 4 | 8 |
+---------+-----------+
A task is assigned to at least one person (denoted by the "assigned_ID") and then any number of people can be assigned as a source (denoted by "source_ID"). The ID numbers are all linked to names in another table. Though the ID numbers are named differently, they all return to the same table.
Would there be any way for me to combine the two tables based on ID such that I could search based on someone's ID number? For example- if I decide to search on or do a WHERE User_ID = 8, in order to see what Tasks that 8 is involved in, I would get back Task 1 and Task 4.
Right now, by joining all the tables together, I can easily filter on "Assigned" but not "Source" due to all the multiple entries in the table.
Use union all:
select distinct task_id
from ((select task_id, assigned_id as id
from tbl_tasks
) union all
(select task_id, source_id
from tbl_resources
)
) ti
where id = ?;
Note that this uses select distinct in case someone is assigned to the same task in both tables. If not, remove the distinct.
Problem: SQL Query that looks at the values in the "Many" relationship, and doesn't return values from the "1" relationship.
Tables Example: (this shows two different tables).
+---------------+----------------------------+-------+
| Unique Number | <-- Table 1 -- Table 2 --> | Roles |
+---------------+----------------------------+-------+
| 1 | | A |
| 2 | | B |
| 3 | | C |
| 4 | | D |
| 5 | | |
| 6 | | |
| 7 | | |
| 8 | | |
| 9 | | |
| 10 | | |
+---------------+----------------------------+-------+
When I run my query, I get multiple, unique numbers that show all of the roles associated to each number like so.
+---------------+-------+
| Unique Number | Roles |
+---------------+-------+
| 1 | C |
| 1 | D |
| 2 | A |
| 2 | B |
| 3 | A |
| 3 | B |
| 4 | C |
| 4 | A |
| 5 | B |
| 5 | C |
| 5 | D |
| 6 | D |
| 6 | A |
+---------------+-------+
I would like to be able to run my query and be able to say, "When the role of A is present, don't even show me the unique numbers that have the role of A".
Maybe if SQL could look at the roles and say, WHEN role A comes up, grab unique number and remove it from column 1.
Based on what I would "like" to happen (I put that in quotations as this might not even be possible) the following is what I would expect my query to return.
+---------------+-------+
| Unique Number | Roles |
+---------------+-------+
| 1 | C |
| 1 | D |
| 5 | B |
| 5 | C |
| 5 | D |
+---------------+-------+
UPDATE:
Query Example: I am querying 8 tables, but I condensed it to 4 for simplicity.
SELECT
c.UniqueNumber,
cp.pType,
p.pRole,
a.aRole
FROM c
JOIN cp ON cp.uniqueVal = c.uniqueVal
JOIN p ON p.uniqueVal = cp.uniqueVal
LEFT OUTER JOIN a.uniqueVal = p.uniqueVal
WHERE
--I do some basic filtering to get to the relevant clients data but nothing more than that.
ORDER BY
c.uniqueNumber
Table sizes: these tables can have anywhere from 50,000 rows to 500,000+
Pretending the table name is t and the column names are alpha and numb:
SELECT t.numb, t.alpha
FROM t
LEFT JOIN t AS s ON t.numb = s.numb
AND s.alpha = 'A'
WHERE s.numb IS NULL;
You can also do a subselect:
SELECT numb, alpha
FROM t
WHERE numb NOT IN (SELECT numb FROM t WHERE alpha = 'A');
Or one of the following if the subselect is materializing more than once (pick the one that is faster, ie, the one with the smaller subtable size):
SELECT t.numb, t.alpha
FROM t
JOIN (SELECT numb FROM t GROUP BY numb HAVING SUM(alpha = 'A') = 0) AS s USING (numb);
SELECT t.numb, t.alpha
FROM t
LEFT JOIN (SELECT numb FROM t GROUP BY numb HAVING SUM(alpha = 'A') > 0) AS s USING (numb)
WHERE s.numb IS NULL;
But the first one is probably faster and better[1]. Any of these methods can be folded into a larger query with multiple additional tables being joined in.
[1] Straight joins tend to be easier to read and faster to execute than queries involving subselects and the common exceptions are exceptionally rare for self-referential joins as they require a large mismatch in the size of the tables. You might hit those exceptions though, if the number of rows that reference the 'A' alpha value is exceptionally small and it is indexed properly.
There are many ways to do it, and the trade-offs depend on factors such as the size of the tables involved and what indexes are available. On general principles, my first instinct is to avoid a correlated subquery such as another, now-deleted answer proposed, but if the relationship table is small then it probably doesn't matter.
This version instead uses an uncorrelated subquery in the where clause, in conjunction with the not in operator:
select num, role
from one_to_many
where num not in (select otm2.num from one_to_many otm2 where otm2.role = 'A')
That form might be particularly effective if there are many rows in one_to_many, but only a small proportion have role A. Of course you can add an order by clause if the order in which result rows are returned is important.
There are also alternatives involving joining inline views or CTEs, and some of those might have advantages under particular circumstances.
I'm generating test data for a new database, and I'm having trouble populating one of the foreign key fields. I need to create a relatively large number (1000) of entries in a table (SurveyResponses) that has a foreign key to a table with only 6 entries (Surveys)
The database already has a Schools table that has a few thousand records. For arguments sake lets say it looks like this
Schools
+----+-------------+
| Id | School Name |
+----+-------------+
| 1 | PS 1 |
| 2 | PS 2 |
| 3 | PS 3 |
| 4 | PS 4 |
| 5 | PS 5 |
+----+-------------+
I'm creating a new Survey table. It will only have about 3 rows.
Survey
+----+-------------+
| Id | Col2 |
+----+-------------+
| 1 | 2014 Survey |
| 2 | 2015 Survey |
| 3 | 2016 Survey |
+----+-------------+
SurveyResponses simply ties a school to a survey.
Survey Responses
+----+----------+----------+
| Id | SchoolId | SurveyId |
+----+----------+----------+
| 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 2 | 2 |
| 3 | 3 | 1 |
| 4 | 4 | 3 |
| 5 | 5 | 2 |
+----+----------+----------+
Populating the SurveyId field is what's giving me the most trouble. I can randomly select 1000 Schools, but I haven't figured out a way to generate 1000 random SurveyIds. I've been trying to avoid a while loop, but maybe that's the only option?
I've been using Red Gate SQL Data Generator to generate some of my test data, but in this case I'd really like to understand how this can be done with raw SQL.
Here is one way, using a correlated subquery to get a random survey associated with each school:
select s.schoolid,
(select top 1 surveyid
from surveys
order by newid()
) as surveyid
from schools s;
Note: This doesn't seem to work. Here is a SQL Fiddle showing the non-workingness. I am quite surprised it doesn't work, because newid() should be a
EDIT:
If you know the survey ids have no gaps and start with 1, you can do:
select 1 + abs(checksum(newid()) % 3) as surveyid
I did check that this does work.
EDIT II:
This appears to be overly aggressive optimization (in my opinion). Correlating the query appears to fix the problem. So, something like this should work:
select s.schoolid,
(select top 1 surveyid
from surveys s2
where s2.surveyid = s.schoolid or s2.surveyid <> s.schoolid -- nonsensical condition to prevent over optimization
order by newid()
) as surveyid
from schools s;
Here is a SQL Fiddle demonstrating this.
I've created a form in PHP that collects basic information. I have a list box that allows multiple items selected (i.e. Housing, rent, food, water). If multiple items are selected they are stored in a field called Needs separated by a comma.
I have created a report ordered by the persons needs. The people who only have one need are sorted correctly, but the people who have multiple are sorted exactly as the string passed to the database (i.e. housing, rent, food, water) --> which is not what I want.
Is there a way to separate the multiple values in this field using SQL to count each need instance/occurrence as 1 so that there are no comma delimitations shown in the results?
Your database is not in the first normal form. A non-normalized database will be very problematic to use and to query, as you are actually experiencing.
In general, you should be using at least the following structure. It can still be normalized further, but I hope this gets you going in the right direction:
CREATE TABLE users (
user_id int,
name varchar(100)
);
CREATE TABLE users_needs (
need varchar(100),
user_id int
);
Then you should store the data as follows:
-- TABLE: users
+---------+-------+
| user_id | name |
+---------+-------+
| 1 | joe |
| 2 | peter |
| 3 | steve |
| 4 | clint |
+---------+-------+
-- TABLE: users_needs
+---------+----------+
| need | user_id |
+---------+----------+
| housing | 1 |
| water | 1 |
| food | 1 |
| housing | 2 |
| rent | 2 |
| water | 2 |
| housing | 3 |
+---------+----------+
Note how the users_needs table is defining the relationship between one user and one or many needs (or none at all, as for user number 4.)
To normalise your database further, you should also use another table called needs, and as follows:
-- TABLE: needs
+---------+---------+
| need_id | name |
+---------+---------+
| 1 | housing |
| 2 | water |
| 3 | food |
| 4 | rent |
+---------+---------+
Then the users_needs table should just refer to a candidate key of the needs table instead of repeating the text.
-- TABLE: users_needs (instead of the previous one)
+---------+----------+
| need_id | user_id |
+---------+----------+
| 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 1 |
| 3 | 1 |
| 1 | 2 |
| 4 | 2 |
| 2 | 2 |
| 1 | 3 |
+---------+----------+
You may also be interested in checking out the following Wikipedia article for further reading about repeating values inside columns:
Wikipedia: First normal form - Repeating groups within columns
UPDATE:
To fully answer your question, if you follow the above guidelines, sorting, counting and aggregating the data should then become straight-forward.
To sort the result-set by needs, you would be able to do the following:
SELECT users.name, needs.name
FROM users
INNER JOIN needs ON (needs.user_id = users.user_id)
ORDER BY needs.name;
You would also be able to count how many needs each user has selected, for example:
SELECT users.name, COUNT(needs.need) as number_of_needs
FROM users
LEFT JOIN needs ON (needs.user_id = users.user_id)
GROUP BY users.user_id, users.name
ORDER BY number_of_needs;
I'm a little confused by the goal. Is this a UI problem or are you just having trouble determining who has multiple needs?
The number of needs is the difference:
Len([Needs]) - Len(Replace([Needs],',','')) + 1
Can you provide more information about the Sort you're trying to accomplish?
UPDATE:
I think these Oracle-based posts may have what you're looking for: post and post. The only difference is that you would probably be better off using the method I list above to find the number of comma-delimited pieces rather than doing the translate(...) that the author suggests. Hope this helps - it's Oracle-based, but I don't see .