Question

I have three tables

Prospect — holds prospect information

id
name
projectID

Sample data for Prospect

id | name | projectID
1  |  p1  |  1
2  |  p2  |  1
3  |  p3  |  1
4  |  p4  |  2
5  |  p5  |  2
6  |  p6  |  2

Conjoint — holds conjoint information

id
title
projectID

Sample data

id | title  | projectID
1  | color  |  1
2  | size   |  1
3  | qual   |  1
4  | color  |  2
5  | price  |  2
6  | weight |  2

There is an associative table that holds the conjoint values for the prospects:

ConjointProspect
id
prospectID
conjointID
value

Sample Data

id | prospectID | conjointID | value
1  |      1     |      1     |   20
2  |      1     |      2     |   30
3  |      1     |      3     |   50
4  |      2     |      1     |   10
5  |      2     |      3     |   40

There are one or more prospects and one or more conjoints in their respective tables. A prospect may or may not have a value for each conjoint.

I’d like to have an SQL statement that will extract all conjoint values for each prospect of a given project, displaying NULL where there is no value for a value that is not present in the ConjointProspect table for a given conjoint and prospect.

Something along the lines of this for projectID = 1

prospectID  | conjoint ID  | value
    1       |      1       |   20
    1       |      2       |   30
    1       |      3       |   50
    2       |      1       |   10
    2       |      2       |   NULL
    2       |      3       |   40
    3       |      1       |   NULL
    3       |      2       |   NULL
    3       |      3       |   NULL

I’ve tried using an inner join on the prospect and conjoint tables and then a left join on the ConjointProspect, but somewhere I’m getting a cartesian products for prospect/conjoint pairs that don’t make any sense (to me)

SELECT p.id, p.name, c.id, c.title, cp.value
FROM prospect p
INNER JOIN  conjoint c ON p.projectID = c.projectid
LEFT JOIN conjointProspect cp ON cp.prospectID = p.id
WHERE  p.projectID = 2
ORDER BY p.id, c.id

prospectID  | conjoint ID  | value
    1       |      1       |   20
    1       |      2       |   30
    1       |      3       |   50
    1       |      1       |   20
    1       |      2       |   30
    1       |      3       |   50
    1       |      1       |   20
    1       |      2       |   30
    1       |      3       |   50
    2       |      1       |   10
    2       |      2       |   40
    2       |      1       |   10
    2       |      2       |   40
    2       |      1       |   10
    2       |      2       |   40
    3       |      1       |   NULL
    3       |      2       |   NULL
    3       |      3       |   NULL

Guidance is very much appreciated!!

Answer 1

Then this will work for you… Prejoin a Cartesian against all prospects and elements within that project via a select as your first FROM table. Then, left join to the conjoinprospect. You can obviously change / eliminate certain columns from result, but at least all is there, in the join you want with exact results you are expecting…

SELECT 
       PJ.*,
       CJP.Value
    FROM 
       (   SELECT 
                   P.ID ProspectID,
                   P.Name,
                   P.ProjectID,
                   CJ.Title,
                   CJ.ID ConJointID
               FROM 
                   Prospect P,
                   ConJoint CJ
               where 
                       P.ProjectID = 1
                   AND P.ProjectID = CJ.ProjectID
               ORDER BY 
                   1, 4
         ) PJ
         LEFT JOIN conjointProspect cjp 
             ON PJ.ProspectID = cjp.prospectID 
            AND PJ.ConjointID = cjp.conjointid
     ORDER BY 
        PJ.ProspectID,
        PJ.ConJointID