Hi Jeff OK, aliasing table is creating a copy of one table but calling it something different, so you compare a table to itself e.g.:
FROM revenue a, revenue b, revenue c COULD ALSO BE FROM revenue AS a, revenue AS b, revenue AS c I am referencing revenue three times but have aliased it as a, b, and c to make sure that my predicate makes sense. As for the loop, I can give you something off the top of my head in rough (very!) PHP , if you don't come right, I can sit down and do the code a little more detailed For simplification purposes, I am going to assume that you can alias tables as numbers (e.g. 1, 2, 3 instead of a, b, c) but I suggest you check if this is possible - if you can't there is a work around that just requires a bit more thought.... //Assume you have an array that has all your client ids in $client_id_array. //Create base values based on the first id... $select_base = "YEAR(1.date) AS year, MONTH(1.date) AS month, > SUM(1.revenue) AS cust1_rev" $for_base = "FROM revenue 1" $predicate_base = "WHERE 1.customer_id = ".$client_id_array[0] //Now loop through and append additional items to each string for each instance of a client //Start at 1 not zero as we already have accounted for the first id above for($j=1; $j < count($client_id_array); $j++) { $select_base = $select_base.', SUM('.($j+1).') AS cust'.($j+1).'_rev'; $for_base = $for_base.', revenue '.($j+1); $predicate_base = $predicate_base.' AND (YEAR('.($j+1).'.date) = YEAR(1.date) AND MONTH('.($j+1).'.date) =MONTH(1.date) AND '.($j+1).'.customer_id = '.$client_id_array[$j].')'; } //Once your loop is done, put the parts together $query = $select_base.$for_base.$predicate_base; If you can't use numbers, you can use single letters, but that requires a little more work incrementing ASCII numbers and then converting to letters - also makes things way more complicated if you have more than 26 clients :) but still doable. HTH Rory McKinley Nebula Solutions +27 82 857 2391 [EMAIL PROTECTED] "There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't" (Unknown) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeff McKeon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Rory McKinley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 6:51 PM Subject: RE: Challenging query.... > If you have a way to generate the query code dynamically > (e.g. using a loop in C, PHP etc.), you can build a query > using aliased tables : > > SELECT YEAR(a.date) AS year, MONTH(a.date) AS month, > SUM(a.revenue) AS cust1_rev, > SUM(b.revenue) AS cust2_rev, SUM(c.revenue) AS cust3_rev > FROM revenue a, revenue b, revenue c > WHERE a.customer_id = 1 AND (YEAR(b.date) = YEAR(a.date) AND > MONTH(b.date) = > MONTH(a.date) AND b.customer_id = 2) > AND (YEAR(c.date) = YEAR(c.date) AND MONTH(c.date) = > MONTH(c.date) AND c.customer_id = 3) GROUP BY year, month > Ok, that looks promising as I'll be using PHP, but I'm a little fuzzy on the logic you've set. What are "aliased tables" and how would I define, use them in an loop? Thanks, Jeff -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]