Thanks to Beau and Tore for insightful feedback. I will most likely implement the lookup table logic and do things right from the start rather than using a band-aid solution.
Rich -----Original Message----- From: Beau Hartshorne [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 9:56 PM To: 'Rich Hutchins' Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Perplexed by reverse SELECT statement. Hi Rich, I think that instead of a readBY column in your news table, you should use what's called a lookup table. In this case, the lookup table would store the primary key from the news table and the primary key from the user table. Your table structure might look something like this: user ---------- user_id username password news ---------- news_id headline body user_news (the lookup table) ---------- user_id news_id The data in the user_news table will look something like: SELECT user_id,news_id FROM user_news; +---------+---------+ | user_id | news_id | +---------+---------+ | 1 | 2 | | 1 | 10 | | 1 | 9 | | 2 | 23 | | 1 | 23 | +---------+---------+ This means user 1 has read news items 2,10,9 and 23. User 2 has read only news item 23. With this structure, you should be able to build a SELECT query to find the information you need. Beau > When I do a SELECT of all news items from this news table, I > want to select only those items that I have not read - ones > where the user ID 1 is NOT in the readBY column. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Before posting, please check: http://www.mysql.com/manual.php (the manual) http://lists.mysql.com/ (the list archive) To request this thread, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Trouble unsubscribing? Try: http://lists.mysql.com/php/unsubscribe.php --------------------------------------------------------------------- Before posting, please check: http://www.mysql.com/manual.php (the manual) http://lists.mysql.com/ (the list archive) To request this thread, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Trouble unsubscribing? Try: http://lists.mysql.com/php/unsubscribe.php
