Left Join is producing duplicate results - MySQL & relational tables

From: Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 01:46:14 +0000
Subject: Left Join is producing duplicate results - MySQL & relational tables
Groups: php.db 
Request: Send a blank email to php-db+get-10306@lists.php.net to get a copy of this message
Hello, I posted this to the general list this morning & got a couple of good leads, but they weren't able to actually fix the problem, so I'm posting here to the db list. I'm making some headway on joining three MySQL tables. However, when I run this query: mysql_query("SELECT
      WLPbib.bibID,
         WLPbib.title,
         WLPbib.publisher,
         WLPbib.publicationDate,
         WLPaddress.city,
         WLPaddress.state,
         WLPprofile.firstName,
         WLPprofile.lastName,
         WLPprofile.organization,
         WLPcountry.languageName
 FROM      WLPbib
         LEFT JOIN WLPprofile ON WLPprofile.profileID = WLPbib.profileID
         LEFT JOIN WLPaddress ON WLPaddress.publisherID = WLPbib.publisherID
         LEFT JOIN WLPcountry ON WLPcountry.countryID = WLPaddress.countryID");
I now get results in triplicate. ie. I'm getting three copies of the same title, firstName, organization, etc.... I somehow suspected that this should be the result with LEFT JOIN, but I'm not sure how to return a query without duplication. This is far better than what I had this morning (which was no response from the server). Thanks. I'm new to joining tables... Someone wrote back suggesting that SELECT DISTINCT could be used to to the job. Another person suggested that using UNIQUE(profileID) would make it look nicer. I wasn't sure how to use UNIQUE with the last JOIN as it isn't directly linked to WLPbib.. Any suggestions would be useful. Mike -- Mike Gifford, OpenConcept Consulting, http://openconcept.ca Offering everything your organization needs for an effective web site. Abolish Nuclear Weapons Now!: http://pgs.ca/petition/ It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - A Einstein

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