A WHERE AND OR MySQL query, help...

listenmirndt

Hi guys I am trying to write a fairly big MySQL query, something like this :

WHERE
OS_1 = 'Linux Console' ||
OS_2 = 'Linux Console' ||
OS_3 = 'Linux Console' ||
OS_4 = 'Linux Console' ||
OS_5 = 'Linux Console' ||
OS_6 = 'Linux Console' ||
OS_7 = 'Linux Console' ||
OS_8 = 'Linux Console' ||
OS_9 = 'Linux Console' ||
OS_10 = 'Linux Console' AND
CATEGORY = '18' ||
SECONDCATEGORY = '18' ||
THIRDCATEGORY = '18' ||
FOURTHCATEGORY = '18' ||
FIFTHCATEGORY = '18'

One, or the other is searching correctly, but this is for a search, so if a category does not match, and an OS does match, it shouldnt return any results, but it does, I guess I am making some little syntax error, but I don't see it..

Any help would be great,
Thanks!

Piranha

It seems like you should redesign your database. Search for "database normalization" to get to know why this design is wrong and how to correct it. There is a good article on it on www.phpbuilder.com.

listenmirndt

Well, I have reasons for doing it the way it's been done, thanks for the suggestion, but I still would like to find a way to do it like I have it.

Piranha

Excuse me for being blunt and straight to the point. If you can't get a simple query to work with the current design I don't think that you know databases enough to know if the reason you have is good enough or not. Just a hypothetical example: The customer want more OSes in the future, how do you do that? It isn't enough to change the database, you have to change all queries as well.

Please prove me wrong by posting the reasons to do it the way it's done.