Joining two tables together

benja

I have to diferent tables, with similar rows.

Example

Table: books
-id
-name
-isbn
-description
-OTHER1

Table: magazines
-id
-name
-isbn
-description
-OTHER2 (diferent than other1)

now i need to do a search on both tables. For example find a book or magazine with a name like "php programming".

How do this ?

Can someone help me ?

Marcusanthonius

Wasn't it something like:

Select NAME from books, magazines WERE name LIKE %php programming%

Although I might be wrong, the answer is basic SQL.
Just open a sql book in a local library and it wil be something like I wrote. I will be written in the first 2 paragraph.

Greetings,
and just like me... practise!

leatherback

Hi Benja,

Have you considered putting the ifno intoone table, and using one colum which identifies whether it is a book or a magazine? Just imagine that you will add comic books, hardcover books, newspapers etcetc to your database. In this setup you would have to add a table, and change all your queries. Whereas if you have one table, and you built your queries smart, you can keep adding literature types to the table, and the scripts will adjust your menus, listings etcetc.

benja

leatherback, i understand your point, but im getting the dump of the database like this from an old software the company has. I cant modify it. 🙁

i have a solution: In mySQL 4.x there is something called UNION

Select from table1 UNION Select from table2;

So i upgraded my mySQL to version 4.x to make this work.

Thanks for the help.

leatherback

Yeah, always great when somebody has not thought for you...

;-)

Of course.. If you really wanted it, you -could- write a conversion program. Just try to estimate how often things will need to be changed in the future, and see whether it is worth your time/the hassle.

Good luck with sweeping the programming floor..

benja

if all where so intelligent as us 🙂

benja

its not worth the time.
Beacuse a new (better made) software is being made. So i think its beter to wait for a while.