Question

I have two tables: Toys and Games.

+--------------------+------------------+
| Field              | Type             |
+--------------------+------------------+
| toy_id             | int(10) unsigned |
| little_kid_id      | int(10) unsigned |
+--------------------+------------------+

+--------------------+------------------+
| Field              | Type             |
+--------------------+------------------+
| game_id            | int(10) unsigned |
| little_kid1        | int(10) unsigned |
| little_kid2        | int(10) unsigned |
| little_kid3        | int(10) unsigned |
+--------------------+------------------+

A little kid can have multiple toys.
A little kid can be participating in multiple games at once.

I want a query that will give me the total number of toys + games that a little_kid is involved with.

Basically, I want the sum of these two queries:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM Toys WHERE little_kid_id = 900;
SELECT COUNT(*) from Games WHERE little_kid1 = 900 
                              OR little_kid2 = 900 
                              OR little_kid3 = 900;

Is it possible to get this in a single SQL query? Obviously, I can sum them programmatically, but that’s less desirable.

(I realize that the contrived example makes the schema look ineffecient. Let’s assume that we can’t change the schema.)

Answer 1

Wrap them up and use subqueries:

SELECT
(SELECT COUNT(*) FROM Toys WHERE little_kid_id = 900)+
(SELECT COUNT(*) from Games WHERE little_kid1 = 900 
                              OR little_kid2 = 900 
                              OR little_kid3 = 900)
AS SumCount

Voila!