On 7/19/2010 12:36 PM, Ashley M. Kirchner wrote:
>
> I may be going at this completely wrong but at the moment I'm
> stuck. I have a DB from a client and need to do several searches on
> it. This one sentence is important because it's their DB, not mine. So
> I can't modify the way the DB was created in the first place, I can only
> work with what I have. And, whatever the solution to this might be, it
> does NOT have to be strictly MySQL, it can also be a PHP solution (which
> is why I'm sending it there as well.) So, having said that, consider
> the following table:
>
> +-------+-----+-----+---+
> | 00001 | 123 | 0.0 | C |
> | 00001 | 234 | 0.1 | D |
> | 00001 | 345 | 0.0 | D |
> | 00001 | 456 | 0.1 | C |
> | 00001 | 567 | 0.1 | G |
> | 00002 | 123 | 0.0 | C |
> | 00002 | 234 | 0.1 | D |
> | 00002 | 345 | 0.0 | D |
> | 00003 | 234 | 0.1 | D |
> | 00003 | 345 | 0.0 | D |
> | 00003 | 123 | 0.0 | C |
> | 00003 | 456 | 0.1 | C |
> | 00003 | 567 | 0.1 | G |
> | 00004 | 123 | 0.0 | C |
> | 00004 | 234 | 0.1 | D |
> | 00004 | 345 | 0.0 | D |
> +-------+-----+-----+---+
>
> mysql> select * from table where id='00001';
> +-------+-----+-----+---+
> | 00001 | 123 | 0.0 | C |
> | 00001 | 234 | 0.1 | D |
> | 00001 | 345 | 0.0 | D |
> | 00001 | 456 | 0.1 | C |
> | 00001 | 567 | 0.1 | G |
> +-------+-----+-----+---+
>
> Now, I have to find other IDs that match the above result. In the
> table, that would be ID '00003' (and in the entire DB, there may be
> others as well - I need to find all those IDs.) But, notice how ID 0003
> isn't in the same order as ID 00001, but the data is still the same.
>
> So how do I efficiently search through the DB to find other IDs that
> matches the one I need? I can't imagine doing a for loop selecting each
> ID and comparing their result to the one I'm starting with. If the DB
> contains thousands upon thousands of rows, that might take a very long
> time.
>
> Open to suggestions.
>
Just because someone hands you a set of data to *start* with, does not
mean that you must only use that data to *work* with.
You should be able create additional tables derived from the original
data and work with those as part of your analysis project. No
modification of the original *tables* will be required.
But this would indeed be much easier to talk about if your columns had
names.
--
Shawn Green
MySQL Principle Technical Support Engineer
Oracle USA, Inc.
Office: Blountville, TN
