Re: find a value in entire table...

that's a fine idea! I'll hve a play... Cheers... Martin Norland <martin.norland@stjude.org> 06/04/2005 14:51 Please respond to php-db@lists.php.net To php-db@lists.php.net cc Subject Re: [PHP-DB] find a value in entire table... Tristan.Pretty@risk.sungard.com wrote: > I need to search an entire table for a value, and then report back what > field it was found in... how on earth do I do that? > I've a list of departments, as field names. > whenever a user interacts with that Dpet, I wanna add thier id No to the > appropriate field. [snip] > So I wanna input an user ID no, and then get told what Dpets have been > accessed... > > I need to learn this, as I know it's simple, but I've never had to do it > before! You'll be better off storing a single row for each user/department interaction. In fact, break them straight out into id's and just have it as a linking table user_department_interactions | user_id | department_id | then have a table for the departments information departments | department_id | department_name | more fields... | a simple join in your query will tell you the department name select distinct department_name from user_department_interactions where user_id=3 AND user_department_interactions.department_id = departments.department_id; the above will return a list of department names that user_id 3 interacted with. Whenever they interact with a department you just insert a single row into the user_department_interactions table, if you only ever want to store whether they interacted at all, you can set constraints and catch the error on insert, or search before inserting. cheers, -- - Martin Norland, Sys Admin / Database / Web Developer, International Outreach x3257 The opinion(s) contained within this email do not necessarily represent those of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php