Question

I have two tables. I want to join them in a way that only one record in the right table is returned for each record in the left most table. I’ve included an example below. I’d like to avoid subqueries and temporary tables as the actual data is about 4M rows. I also don’t care which record in the rightmost table is matched, as long as one or none is matched. Thanks!

table users:

-------------
| id | name |
-------------
| 1  | mike |
| 2  | john |
| 3  | bill |
-------------

table transactions:

---------------
| uid | spent | 
---------------
| 1   | 5.00  |
| 1   | 5.00  |
| 2   | 5.00  |
| 3   | 5.00  |
| 3   | 10.00 |
---------------

expected output:

---------------------
| id | name | spent |
---------------------
| 1  | mike | 5.00  |
| 2  | john | 5.00  |
| 3  | bill | 5.00  |
---------------------

Answer 1

Use:

  SELECT u.id,
         u.name,
         MIN(t.spent) AS spent
    FROM USERS u
    JOIN TRANSACTIONS t ON t.uid = u.id
GROUP BY u.id, u.name

Mind that this will only return users who have at least one TRANSACTIONS record. If you want to see users who don’t have supporting records as well as those who do – use:

   SELECT u.id,
          u.name,
          COALESCE(MIN(t.spent), 0) AS spent
     FROM USERS u
LEFT JOIN TRANSACTIONS t ON t.uid = u.id
 GROUP BY u.id, u.name