Question

How to make this syntax works :

SELECT * 
FROM
  uploads,
  audienceuploadassociation 
WHERE 
  uploads.member_id = '1'
  AND uploads.member_school_id='1' 
  AND subject = 'Maths' 
  AND uploads.upload_id = audienceuploadassociation.upload_id 
  AND topic = 'Integers' 
  AND year IN(7, 8, 9) 
  AND audienceuploadassociation.audiencename LIKE (Parents, Teachers, Community)

Answer 1

Your LIKE clause is faulty. I suspect that you intend to use an IN() clause instead:

AND audienceuploadassociation.audiencename IN ('Parents', 'Teachers', 'Community')

If you are trying to match partial strings with LIKE, you need to OR them together in a () group, as in:

AND (
  audienceuploadassociation.audiencename LIKE 'Parents%'
  OR audienceuploadassociation.audiencename LIKE 'Teachers%'
  OR audienceuploadassociation.audiencename LIKE 'Community%'
)

Note also, that the implicit join syntax you are using (comma-separated tables) is deprecated in favor of an explicit JOIN.

SELECT
  uploads.*,
  audienceuploadassociation.*
FROM
  /* Explicit JOIN  with ON clause */
  uploads
  JOIN audienceuploadassociation ON uploads.upload_id = audienceuploadassociation.upload_id 
WHERE 
  uploads.member_id = '1'
  AND uploads.member_school_id='1' 
  AND subject = 'Maths' 
  AND topic = 'Integers' 
  AND year IN(7, 8, 9) 
  AND audienceuploadassociation.audiencename IN ('Parents', 'Teachers', 'Community')

Finally, I would recommend explicitly naming the columns you want rather than doing SELECT *, so you get them in a deterministic order, and guard against the addition of other columns later that you don’t need in this query:

SELECT 
  uploads.upload_id,
  uploads.other_column,
  uploads.topic,
  audienceuploadassociation.audiencename,
  ...
  ...