MySQL JOIN a table, and then JOIN that new table to itself - php

First of all, I'm not proficient at all in SQL, so this is a monumental task, but here is what I got so far:
SQL Fiddle
As you can see, I've got a project management software project and I'm trying to build a report from it. Seems like mostly I'm getting the data i need, except that I can't get the Parent Task name.
Tasks table includes ids, names, etc, as well as a column specifically for a Parent Task Id. So it needs to be joined to itself so that I can get the name of that parent task. But in the same run, I'm starting from the timelogs table, and trying to join a bunch of other tables for other information.
In my production database, for example, I also have a company table that all of the projects have an id for, so I'm going to need to join those together at some point too.
So here's the QUESTION:
Why in that sqlfiddle up there, does the parent task name field not fill out for taskID 6? How do I get that info?

The left join needs to join on the pt reference you set for tasks. Your join should look like so:
LEFT JOIN tasks pt ON tasks.parentTaskId = pt.taskId
See updated fiddle here.

Related

Optimize query with big-table-join

I have one big table.
Let's call it 'unicorns'.
And second table 'farmers'.
Structure:
farmers
id
name
... some more fields
unicorns
id
farmer_id
... some more fields
And there is query:
SELECT
f.id,
f.name,
COUNT(*)
FROM
farmers f
LEFT JOIN unicorns u
ON u.farmer_id = f.id
GROUP BY f.id
Of course tables are really named not this way and have more fields etc. But I have left only the most important things in my example.
The problem is that the system grows, and there are too many unicorns. Millions.
And this query (like-this) is executed on farmers list page.
And page is loading not so fast as before, because we join a multi-million table each time we load page.
Problem is:
We really need to display each farmer's unicorns count in the list.
We need to improve page load speed.
If you would need to optimize this, how would you achieve this result?
What would you recommend?
P.S.
Personally I think I need to exclude big-table-join from the main query, calculate unicorns counts separately and store them in the cache storage, recalculate them time after time. Maybe there is the best way, so I wanted to hear someone else's opinion.
I would just have an extra column on the farmer's table for NumberUnicorns and store it there. Then, via some database triggers, when a record is added to the unicorn table, it just updates the farmers table with the respective count from the new record. Also consider updating the count if unicorn records are deleted. Then, your query is immediately from the farmers table -- done.

Too relation or not to relation ? A MySQL, PHP database workflow

im kinda new with mysql and i'm trying to create a kind complex database and need some help.
My db structure
Tables(columns)
1.patients (Id,name,dob,etc....)
2.visits (Id,doctor,clinic,Patient_id,etc....)
3.prescription (Id,visit_id,drug_name,dose,tdi,etc....)
4.payments (id,doctor_id,clinic_id,patient_id,amount,etc...) etc..
I have about 9 tables, all of them the primary key is 'id' and its set to autoinc.
i dont use relations in my db (cuz i dont know if it would be better or not ! and i never got really deep into mysql , so i just use php to run query's to Fitch info from one table and use that to run another query to get more info/store etc..)
for example:
if i want to view all drugs i gave to one of my patients, for example his id is :100
1-click patient name (name link generated from (tbl:patients,column:id))
2-search tbl visits WHERE patient_id=='100' ; ---> that return all his visits ($x array)
3-loop prescription tbl searching for drugs with matching visit_id with $x (loop array).
4- return all rows found.
as my database expanding more and more (1k+ record in visit table) so 1 patient can have more than 40 visit that's 40 loop into prescription table to get all his previous prescription.
so i came up with small teak where i edited my db so that patient_id and visit_id is a column in nearly all tables so i can skip step 2 and 3 into one step (
search prescription tbl WHERE patient_id=100), but that left me with so many duplicates in my db,and i feel its kinda stupid way to do it !!
should i start considering using relational database ?
if so can some one explain a bit how this will ease my life ?
can i do this redesign but altering current tables or i must recreate all tables ?
thank you very much
Yes, you should exploit MySQL's relational database capabilities. They will make your life much easier as this project scales up.
Actually you're already using them well. You've discovered that patients can have zero or more visits, for example. What you need to do now is learn to use JOIN queries to MySQL.
Once you know how to use JOIN, you may want to declare some foreign keys and other database constraints. But your system will work OK without them.
You have already decided to denormalize your database by including both patient_id and visit_id in nearly all tables. Denormalization is the adding of data that's formally redundant to various tables. It's usually done for performance reasons. This may or may not be a wise decision as your system scales up. But I think you can trust your instinct about the need for the denormalization you have chosen. Read up on "database normalization" to get some background.
One little bit of advice: Don't use columns named simply "id". Name columns the same in every table. For example, use patients.patient_id, visits.patient_id, and so forth. This is because there are a bunch of automated software engineering tools that help you understand the relationships in your database. If your ID columns are named consistently these tools work better.
So, here's an example about how to do the steps numbered 2 and 3 in your question with a single JOIN query.
SELECT p.patient_id p.name, v.visit_id, rx.drug_name, rx.drug_dose
FROM patients AS p
LEFT JOIN visits AS v ON p.patient_id = v.patient_id
LEFT JOIN prescription AS rx ON v.visit_id = rx.visit_id
WHERE p.patient_id = '100'
ORDER BY p.patient_id, v.visit_id, rx.prescription_id
Like all SQL queries, this returns a virtual table of rows and columns. In this case each row of your virtual table has patient, visit, and drug data. I used LEFT JOIN in this example. That means that a patient with no visits will have a row with NULL data in it. If you specify JOIN MySQL will omit those patients from the virtual table.

Achieve the results of two individual queries using a JOIN

I have a USER table structure as shown below:
id parent_id userName
10 01 Project manager
11 10 manager
12 11 teamlead
13 12 team member
I need to find the project manager ID if I give the team member ID in where clause. I can get the results in each individual query.
But I'm trying to implement it with a JOIN query. I'm new to JOIN queries. How do I do it?
It looks as if this involves a bit more than a simple join. Be ready to enter a world of pain :). I recently had a similar problem, but with type hierarchies being stored in a table with a similar structure. What I ended up with is writing a recursive query. In Sql Server, you would use a Common Table Expression. In mysql, you would use loops.
Basically, the idea is that you join a table against itself, walking a hierarchy until you reach the top-level element. Behind the scenes, the server is creating virtual tables and joining them against each other until some "stopping condition" is reached. This point is very important: be sure that you have your stopping condition correct, or you could cause some serious problems.
This post is a great run-down. Also, a general search for the terms hierarchical query mysql in google will result in a wealth of information.
I believe this should work with your existing schema
SELECT ParentUser.UserName AS ManagerName, BaseUser.UserName AS TeamMemberName
FROM User AS BaseUser
INNER JOIN User AS ParentUser
ON BaseUser.parent_id = ParentUser.id
WHERE BaseUser.Id = #PassedInTeamMemberId
Basically you want to do this:
SELECT * FROM TableA
INNER JOIN TableB
ON TableA.name = TableB.name
WHERE TableA.whatever = 'whatever'
I find this visual explanation of joins from the lovely and talented Jeff Atwood to be quite helpful.

Multiple joins in database

This situation is pretty difficult to explain, but I'll do my best.
For school, we have to create a web application (written in PHP) which allows teachers to manage their students' projects and allow these to make peer-evaluation. As there are many students, every projects has multiple projectgroups (and ofcourse you should only peer-evaluate your own group members).
My databasestructure looks like this at the moment:
Table users: contains all user info (user_id is primary)
Table: projects: Contains a project_id, a name, a description and a start date.
So far this is pretty easy. But now it gets more difficult.
Table groups: Contains a group_id, a groupname and as a group is specific for a project, it also holds a project_id.
Table groupmembers: A group contains multiple users, but users can be in multiple groups (as they can be active in multiple projects). So this table contains a user_id and a group_id to link these.
At last, admins can decide when users need to do their peer-evaluation and how much time they have for it. So there is a last table evaluations containing an evaluation_id, a start and end date and a project_id (the actual evaluations are stored in a sixth table, which is not relevant for now).
I think this is a good design, but it gets harder when I actually have to use this data. I would like to show a list of evaluations you still have to fill in. The only thing you know is your user_id as this is stored in the session.
So this would have to be done:
1) Run a query on groupmembers to see in which groups the user is.
2) With this result, run a query on groups to see to which projects these groups are related.
3) Now that we know what projects the user is in, the evaluations table should be queried to see if there are ongoing evaluations for this projects.
4) We now know which evaluations are available, but now we also need to check the sixth table to see if the user has already completed this evaluation.
All these steps are dependent on the result of each other, so they should all contain their own error handling. Once the user has chosen the evaluation they wish to fill in (a evaluationID will be send via GET), a lot of new queries will have to be run to check which users this member has in his group and will have to evaluate and another check to see which other groupmembers are already evaluated).
As you see, this is quite complex. With all the errorhandling included, my script will be a real mess. Someone told me a "view" might help in this situation, but I don't really understand why this would help me here.
Is there a good way to do this?
Thank you very much!
you are thinking too procedurally.
all your conditions should be easily entered into one single where clause of a sql statement.
you will end up with a single list of the items to be evaluated. only one list, only one set of error handling.
Not sure if this is exactly right, but try this basic approach. I didn't run this against an actual database so the syntax may need to be tweaked.
select p.project_name
from projects p inner join evaluations e on p.project_id = e.project_id
where p.project_id in (
select project_id
from projects p inner join groups g on p.project_id = g.project_id
inner join groupmembers gm on gm.group_id = g.group_id
where gm.user_id = $_SESSION['user_id'])
Also, you'll need to make sure that you properly escape your user_id when making it a part of the query, but that is a whole other topic.

Problem with getting specific data based on several factors in MySQL

I have a system where a user is part of a series of "runs", to each "run", can be added courses, teachers(users), classes and so on.
Each teacher(user) has chosen his/her classes & courses.
Here's a run-down of the tables I have that are relevant:
lam_run - The run in it self.
lam_run_course - Relational table that shows what runs has what courses
lam_teacher_course - Relational table that shows which teacher has which courses
lam_run_teacher - Relational table that shows what teachers are in what courses
What I want to do is show each teacher which runs that are relevant to them (based on which courses they have selected seen in lam_teacher_course) but in which they are not already participating.
Here's the MySQL code I have so far that does not work:
$query_relevant_runs = "
SELECT DISTINCT
lam_run_course.run_id
FROM
lam_teacher_course,
lam_run_course,
lam_run, lam_run_teacher
WHERE
lam_teacher_course.user_id = '1'
AND
lam_teacher_course.course_id = lam_run_course.course_id
AND
lam_run_teacher.user_id != '1'";
Instead this code shows all runs that are relevant, but it doesn't exclude the runs the user is already in..
What can I do to fix this?
Ps. Sorry for bad title, no idea what I should've called it :S
Here is a link to part of the databases (the relevant part): Link!
I think what you're looking for is:
LEFT JOIN `lam_run_teacher` `lam_run_teach_exclude`
ON `lam_run_teacher_exclude`.`user_id` = `lam_teacher_user`.`user_id`
...
WHERE `lam_run_teacher`.`user_id` IS NULL
The LEFT JOIN takes your current query, and appends the additional data to it. However, unlike the INNER JOIN you are using now (using the kinda-strange multiple-from syntax), the LEFT JOIN does not limit your resultset to just those where there is data for the righthand side. The righthand columns will be NULL. By filtering on that NULL, you can find all runs that are interesting, and for which there is not yet a relation to the teacher.
Does this help?
I'd recommend always using the normal join syntax (INNER JOIN target on target.id = source.id) - that way you're more aware of the idea that there are other kinds of join as well, and all your joins will look identical. It takes some getting used to, but definitely helps when your queries get more complex.
Also, in your cross-referencing tables, you can drop the primary key columns. If the only purpose of a table is to define a link between two tables, make the primary key consist of the two keys you've got. Unless you want to be able to related the same teacher to a run multiple times...
OK, took me way longer than it should have, but here's the complete thing:
SELECT
DISTINCT `lam_run_course`.run_id
FROM
`lam_run_course`
INNER JOIN
`lam_teacher_course`
ON `lam_teacher_course`.course_id = `lam_teacher_course`.course_id
LEFT JOIN
`lam_run_teacher` ON (`lam_run_teacher`.`run_id` = `lam_run_course`.`run_id` AND `lam_run_teacher`.`user_id` = 3)
WHERE
`lam_teacher_course`.user_id = 3
and `lam_run_teacher`.`run_id` IS NULL

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