I have two tables, one contains user account info the other contains active sessions in a web app. In the user account table I have a column that contains each user's 'access level'. I'm somewhat new to relational databases and SQL, and though the following is working for me, I want to find out if it is the best way to handle it.
Obviously, during the user's session it is often necessary to determine their specific access level. Right now I am doing it in this fashion... The session table looks like this: session_id int(10) primary key, username varchar(16) 'this is the foreign key related the user table' created datetime, updated datetime The user table looks like this: username varchar(16) primary key, password varchar(16), firstname varchar(30), lastname varchar(30), email varchar(100), access int(10) So when I need to determine the access level of a user during a given session I use the following query: select user.access from user, session where session.session_id = '$id' and session.username = user.username; This is working fine right now... but exactly how it is working and/or what it is actually doing still confuses me a little bit. The reason I did it this way is because at any given time I know the $id (session id) variable. It seemed more elegant to do it as a join rather than first grab the username from the session table with a select statement, and then use the username to grab the access level from the user table with another select statement. Is this a good looking query?? Or is there a better way to do this? Thanks! - Ben --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
