Question

if you have parent table

create table parent (
  pid int not null,
  name varchar(255)
)

and a parent-child join table

create table parent_child (
  pid int not null,
  cid int not null,
  foreign key (pid) references parent(pid),
  foreign key (cid) references child(cid)
)
create table child(
  cid int not null,
  name varchar(255)
)

How can I find all parent’s names where all their children have names in the following list (‘dave’,’henry’,’myriam’,’jill’).

I don’t want to see a parent if they have a child with a different name, but if they have 1 or more children and all their children have names in the list I want to see the parent’s name.

I did find this https://stackoverflow.com/a/304314/1916621 that will help me find a parent with children of the exactly those names, but I can’t figure out how to the parents who only have children with names in a subset of that list.

Extra points if someone knows performance tradeoff for different approaches.

Answer 1

SELECT 
    p.pid, 
    p.name
FROM 
    parent p
WHERE NOT EXISTS (
    SELECT *
    FROM 
        parent_child pc 
        JOIN child c 
            ON pc.cid = c.cid
            AND c.name NOT IN ('dave','henry','myriam','jill')
    WHERE 
        p.pid = pc.pid
) AND EXISTS (
    SELECT *
    FROM 
        parent_child pc 
        JOIN child c 
            ON pc.cid = c.cid
            AND c.name IN ('dave','henry','myriam','jill')
    WHERE 
        p.pid = pc.pid
)

Another method… no sub-queries, but additional DISTINCT needed to eliminate duplication of parent records from joining to the parent_child table.

SELECT DISTINCT
    p.pid, 
    p.name
FROM 
    parent p 
    JOIN parent_child pc_exists ON pc_exists.pid = p.pid
    JOIN child c_exists 
        ON c_exists.cid = pc_exists.cid
        AND c_exists.name IN ('dave','henry','myriam','jill')
    LEFT JOIN parent_child pc_notExists ON pc_notExists.pid = p.pid
    LEFT JOIN child c_notExists 
        ON c_notExists.cid = pc_notExists.cid
        AND c_notExists.name NOT IN ('dave','henry','myriam','jill')
WHERE
    c_notExists.cid IS NULL