"of course you have the problem where john has Joe as a friend but Joe doesn't have john as a friend. This seeming inconsistency, may or may not be a problem depending on exactly what kind of a relationship you are trying to define."
You've just hit the nail on the head! That's exactly the problem. I think I might just have to grin and bear what I already have :-( -----Original Message----- From: 2wsxdr5 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 07 April 2006 15:11 To: Martin Gallagher; mysql@lists.mysql.com Subject: Re: Social Network, linking members Martin Gallagher wrote: >Hi, > >I'm trying to find the most efficient way of "linking" members to one >another in a social networking application. > >Currently I link them using 2 separate fields for the members: id1, id2. So, >to find people in your network you would do: > I'm not sure exactly what it is you are doing but I think this may be it. You have a table of people and you want to know who is friends with who. I know 'friend' may not be the best term to use but it is easier to type. So I have my people table. People{ *PID, Name, . . . } Then the Friend Table, Friend{ *PID, *FID } If you have person, John, with ID 234, and you want to know all his friends you can do this... SELECT f.FID, p.Name FROM Friend f JOIN People p ON f.FID = p.PID WHERE f.PID = 234 of course you have the problem where john has Joe as a friend but Joe doesn't have john as a friend. This seeming inconsistency, may or may not be a problem depending on exactly what kind of a relationship you are trying to define. -- Chris W KE5GIX Gift Giving Made Easy Get the gifts you want & give the gifts they want One stop wish list for any gift, from anywhere, for any occasion! http://thewishzone.com -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
