On Aug 21, 2007, at 12:49 , Josh Trutwin wrote:

SELECT pb_ids FROM pb WHERE id = 123:

         pb_id
-----------------------
 {196,213,215,229,409}

These numbers map to a productid in tblproducts so I figured I could
do this:

SELECT *
  FROM tblproducts
 WHERE productid = ANY (
       SELECT pb_ids FROM pb WHERE id=123
 );

Out of curiosity, what led to the schema design of storing these pb_id values in an array rather than in a many-to-many table? You're working against the database server here. The usual way to define this relationship would be

CREATE TABLE pb (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY);
CREATE TABLE pb_ids
(
    id INTEGER NOT NULL REFERENCES pb
    , pb_id INTEGER NOT NULL
        REFERENCES tblproducts (pb)
    , PRIMARY KEY (id, pb)
);

(if I've interpreted the column and table names correctly)

Then your query reduces to a simple
SELECT *
FROM tblproducts
JOIN pb_ids ON (pb_id = pb)
WHERE id = 123;

This reduces the query to straight-forward SQL (which is set based) rather than wrangling arrays (which are really better considered opaque from the standpoint of database schema design) and enables referential integrity using built-in foreign key constraints rather than requiring custom triggers (to make sure each element of the pb_id array corresponds to a pb value in tblproducts).

Michael Glaesemann
grzm seespotcode net



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