Many to many relation hookup in Delphi - database

How do I do a many to many (master-master) relation in Delphi, I cannot find an example. Only dblookups and master-detail which I understand.
Like a product can belong to one or more categories. Like this table structure:
Product Table
ProductId, ProductName
CategoryTable
CategoryId, CategoryName
Relation table
ProductId, CategoryId
Ideally if you select a record in the product grid the edit of a product in a detail record is started in the right side of the screen. In here you can edit the product properties an ideally you can select via checkboxes one or more categories in a checkbox group/grid.
How do you hook this up with TTable of TQuery components? Is there a way?
Hope you can help!
Sincerely Edward
Some more explaination:
The goal is like:
master [product grid list] Detail [on selected product]
property **A**
property **B**
property **C**
property **D**
property **Category collection**
Category 1 - checked
Category 2 - unchecked
Category 3 - unchecked
Category 4 - checked

This can be transformed to a simple Master-Detail relation by using a joined query over Relation Table and Category Table (similar like this example):
SELECT * FROM Relation a
JOIN Category b on a.CategoryId = b.CategoryId
WHERE ProductId = :ProductId
In case you want a list of all categories where a separate field indicates if a relation to the product exists, you can use a query like this (example for MSSQL, the new field is named Checked):
SELECT c.*, CASE WHEN r.CategoryId IS NULL THEN 0 ELSE 1 END AS Checked
FROM CATEGORY
LEFT JOIN Relation r ON (c.CategoryId = r.CategoryId) AND (r.ProductId = :ProductId)
ORDER BY c.CategoryId
Note that you have to write the code to add or delete the relation record when you manipulate the check list by yourself.

Related

SqlServer Many to Many AND

I have 3 (hypothetical) tables.
Photos (a list of photos)
Attributes (things describing the photos)
PhotosToAttributes (a table to link the first 2)
I want to retrieve the Names of all the Photos that have a list of attributes.
For example, all photos that have both dark lighting and are portraits (AttributeID 1 and 2). Or, for example, all photos that have dark lighting, are portraits and were taken at a wedding (AttributeID 1 and 2 and 5). Or any arbitrary number of attributes.
The scale of the database will be maybe 10,000 rows in Photos, 100 Rows in Attributes and 100,000 rows in PhotosToAttributes.
This question: SQL: Many-To-Many table AND query is very close. (I think.) I also read the linked answers about performance. That leads to something like the following. But, how do I get Name instead of PhotoID? And presumably my code (C#) will build this query and adjust the attribute list and count as necessary?
SELECT PhotoID
FROM PhotosToAttributes
WHERE AttributeID IN (1, 2, 5)
GROUP by PhotoID
HAVING COUNT(1) = 3
I'm a bit database illiterate (it's been 20 years since I took a database class); I'm not even sure this is a good way to structure the tables. I wanted to be able to add new attributes and photos at will without changing the data access code.
It is probably a reasonable way to structure the database. An alternate would be to keep all the attributes as a delimited list in a varchar field, but that would lead to performance issues as you search the field.
Your code is close, to take it to the final step you should just join the other two tables like this:
Select p.Name, p.PhotoID
From Photos As p
Join PhotosToAttributes As pta On p.PhotoID = pta.PhotoID
Join Attributes As a On pta.AttributeID = a.AttributeID
Where a.Name In ('Dark Light', 'Portrait', 'Wedding')
Group By p.Name, p.PhotoID
Having Count(*) = 3;
By joining the Attributes table like that it means you can search for attributes by their name, instead of their ID.
For first create view from your joins:
create view vw_PhotosWithAttributes
as
select
p.PhotoId,
a.AttributeID,
p.Name PhotoName,
a.Name AttributeName
from Photos p
inner join PhotosToAttributes pa on p.PhotoId = pa.PhotoId
inner join Attributes a on a.AttributeID = pa.AttributeID
You can easy ask for attribute, name, id but don't forget to properly index field.

Complex query possible?

I have 3 tables, a parent table and 2 child tables. Lets say Mother_c is the parent. Then Child_c and Pet_c are the 2 child tables that have master-detail relationship pointer to Mother_c.
I have the Id of one row from Child_c, I want to retrieve all the rows from Pet_c that correspond to the Mother_c of that single Child_c row.
I'm wondering if this is possible in one SOQL query?
Yes, this is totally possible with semi-join SOQL. I tested this out with the standard CRM objects like this:
SELECT Id,
(SELECT Id FROM Cases)
FROM Account
WHERE Id IN (SELECT AccountId
FROM Contact
WHERE Id = '0036000000qCwp9'
)
To walk you through this, with a given Contact id, you first find the parent Account, and then traverse back down to the child Cases. In your example with custom objects, it would be very similar, but would use the __r custom relationships names instead:
SELECT Id,
(SELECT Id FROM Pet__r)
FROM Mother__c
WHERE Id IN (SELECT Mother__c
FROM Child__c
WHERE Id = '003a000000qCwp9'
)

Some basic questions on database design and how to insert accordingly with LINQ to Entities

Ok, I am total newbie so bear with me.
Trying to implement an ordering system and wish
to save the orders to the database with LINQ to Entities. I can do it now
but for each new object that is saved to the orders table
a new row is inserted, with new OrderNo for each ProductID where as I obviously
should be able to have multiple ProductID's for each OrderNo.
Everything is very simplified as I am just testing.
I have an orders table with columns as such:
OrderNo PK, Identity specification
Line int PL
ProductID int
and a products table
ProductID int PK
An order entity object is instantiated and its properties
are populated with data from a form which is posted to an action method.
It is then saved to the orders table with the following code:
(DropDownList1Value) has value of an existing ProductID and "DropDownList1Value" is the id of the DropDownList element in view.
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult OrderProcessor()
{
int productId = int.Parse(Request.Form["DropDownList1Value"]);
var order = new Order();
order.ProductID = productId;
context.Orders.AddObject(order);
context.SaveChanges();
return View(order);
}
So the records that are inserted look as such:
Sorry, couldn't line up the values under their respective column name in this editor.
OrderNo Line ProductID
101 0 3
102 0 5
103 0 2
Where as I want something like this:
OrderNo Line ProductID
101 1 3
101 2 5
101 3 2
102 1 2
So I wish to know how can I modify the orders table so it
can have multiple records with same "OrderNo" and just increment for "Line" for diff ProductID's and how do I go about inserting such records with LinQ to Entities where
I will obviously have many ProductId from multiple DropDowLists
and they will all be for the one order.
Currently I have foreign key dependency on ProductID in Products table,
so no record in the Orders table can have ProductID which does not exists in the Products table.
I need to make the table depend on the whole key that is OrderNo + Line
and have the "Line" auto increment.
Or is there a much better way of implementing of what I am after here?
Thanks.
Let me first explain briefly what I understood.
There is an invoice, which contains several products for one order number.
and this is how your invoice looks like:
Order Number: 101
------------------
Sl. Products
1 3
2 5
3 2
Before answering I want to point out that you are taking OrderId from a form (That is from client side) This is a wrong and INSECURE approach. Let the order id be AutoGenerated by database.
I would suggest to tweak your database design a little.
Here is a solution that will work.
Note: I am consedering your database support Auto-Increment, for MS SQL replace it with IDENTITY, for Oracle you need to create a sequence.
Product (
id INT PK AUTO-INCREMENT
);
Order (
id INT PK AUTO-INCREMENT
user-id INT FK # user who purchased
### and other common details Like date of purchase etc.
);
Order-Detail (
id INT PK AUTO-INCREMENT
order-id INT FK # Common order id
pdt-id INT FK # product which was purchased.
);
When you make a purchase:
1. Insert a row in order table
2. Fetch the last inserted id
3. Insert order-id from last step and products which are purchased in Order-Detail table,
Fetch all the orders made by a user:
1. Read from order table.
Fetch all products purchased for an order:
1. Fetch details from Order-Detail
Note: You will get List of products purchased, Use Order-detail.id as "Line"
EDIT:
Thanx to HLGEM's comment
If you think price of a product may change then instead of updating the price add a new row to the table (and flag the old table so that it wont be visible, you can also have a column in new table pointing to old table), thus old purchase will point to old product and new orders will point to updated (new) row.
There is one more approach this problem:
store the current cost of product in order-detail table.
If you are facing difficulty understanding above solution here is another and simpler one.
In Order table, Make a composite primary key including OrderNo and Line.
Whenever inserting into database you will need to generate line number in your code, which you can do by runnign a loop over array of propduct being purchased.
I think it would be better to split your current Order table into two separate tables:
Order table
(PK, Identity specification) OrderId
Perhaps other fields like Invoice address, Delivery address, etc.
OrderLine table
(PK, Identity specification) OrderLineId
(FK to Order table) OrderId
(FK to Product table) ProductId
For both tables you have an Entity in your class model: class Order and class OrderLine and a one-to-many relationship between them, so Order has a collection of OrderLines.
Creating an order with all order lines would then look like this:
var order = new Order();
foreach (var item in collection)
{
var orderLine = new OrderLine()
// Get productId from your DropDownLists
orderLine.ProductId = productId;
order.OrderLines.Add(orderLine);
}
context.Orders.AddObject(order);
context.SaveChanges();
Edit
The MVC MusicStore Tutorial might also help for the first steps to create an order processing system with ASP.NET MVC and Entity Framework. It contains classes for orders and order details (among others) and explains their relationships.

Storing multiple employee IDs in one column of data

Web app is being written in classic ASP with a MSSQL backend. On this particular page, the admin can select 1 or any/all of the employees to assign the project to. I'm trying to figure out a simple way to store the employee IDs of the people assigned to it in one column.
The list of employees is generated from another table and can be dynamic (firing or hiring) so I want the program to be flexible enough to change based on these table changes.
Basically need to know how to assign multiple people to a project that can later be called up on a differen page or from a different query.
Sorry for the n00bish question, but thanks!
Don't store multiple ID's in one column! Create another table with the primary key of your existing table and a single ID that you want to store. You can then insert multiple rows into this new table, creating a 1:m (one to many) relationship. For example, let's look at an order table:
order:
order_id
order_date
and I have a product table...
product:
product_id
product_name
Now, you could go down the road of adding a column to order that let you list the products in the order, but that would be bad form. What you want instead is something like..
order_item:
order_item_id
order_id
product_id
quantity
unit_price
You can then perform a join to get all of the products for a particular order...
select
product.*
from orders
inner join order_item on order_item.order_id = order.order_id
inner join product on product.product_id = order_item.product_id
where orders.order_id = 5
Here's an example order_id of 5, and this will get all of the products in that order.
You need to create another table that stores these values such as. So this new table would store one row for each ID, and then link back to the original record with the original records ID.

Combining SQL results using LINQ

I have a database of company registrants (for a search/directory functionality). We've added a new table to hold "enhanced" information for registrants that pay for this feature (such as advertisements/additional images/logos etc). Right now the new table just holds the registrants unique identifier, and a few additional fields (paths to images etc). A user can search for users with specific criteria, and the enhanced listings should appear at the top of the list. The results should not show any registrant twice (so if a user has an enhanced listing they should only appear in the top "enhanced listing" area). How can I accomplish this?
Left outer join from the old table to the new table.
Prepend to your query's "order by" "case when new_table.id is null then 1 else 0 end"
So if you had this:
select foo, bar from old_table
order by bar, foo;
You'd have this:
select a.foo, a.bar from old_table a
left join new table b on (a.customer_id = b.customer_id)
order by
case when new_table.customer_id is null then 1 else 0 end,
bar, foo;
Edit: I left out the "left" from the outer join in the code.
If you are using LINQtoSQL and the designer-generated entities, you should have an entity set of related information on your registrant entity -- assuming you have set up the proper foreign key relationship. If you added this later you may need to add this by hand (see here) or delete/re-add your entities to the designer for it to pick up the new relationship. Then your query would be something like:
var registrants = db.Registrants.Where( ... selection criteria here ... );
registrants = registrants.OrderByDescending( r => r.EnhancedData.Count() )
.ThenBy( r => r.Name ); // or normal sort order
Presumably count will be either 0 or 1 so this should put the ones with enhanced data at the top of your result.

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