Why is this LEFT JOIN eliminating records with nothing in the other table?

Question

I have a MySQL Left Join problem.

I have three tables which I'm trying to join.

A person table:

CREATE TABLE person (
    id INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    type ENUM('student', 'staff', 'guardian') NOT NULL,
    first_name CHAR(30) NOT NULL,
    last_name CHAR(30) NOT NULL,
    gender ENUM('m', 'f') NOT NULL,
    dob VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY (id)
);

A student table:

CREATE TABLE student (
    id INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    person_id INT NOT NULL,
    primary_guardian INT NOT NULL,
    secondary_guardian INT,
    join_date VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,  
    status ENUM('current', 'graduated', 'expelled', 'other') NOT NULL,
    tutor_group VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
    year_group VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY (id),
    FOREIGN KEY (person_id) REFERENCES person(id) ON DELETE CASCADE,
    FOREIGN KEY (primary_guardian) REFERENCES guardian(id),
    FOREIGN KEY (secondary_guardian) REFERENCES guardian(id),
    FOREIGN KEY (tutor_group) REFERENCES tutor_group(name),
    FOREIGN KEY (year_group) REFERENCES year_group(name)
);

And an incident table:

CREATE TABLE incident (
    id INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    student INT NOT NULL,
    staff INT NOT NULL,
    guardian INT NOT NULL,
    sent_home BOOLEAN NOT NULL,
    illness_type VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    action_taken VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    incident_date DATETIME NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY (id),
    FOREIGN KEY (student) REFERENCES student(id),
    FOREIGN KEY (staff) REFERENCES staff(id),
    FOREIGN KEY (guardian) REFERENCES guardian(id)
);

What I'm trying to select is the first name, last name and the number of incidents for each student in year 9.

Here's my best attempt at the query:

SELECT p.first_name, p.last_name, COUNT(i.student)
FROM person p, student s  LEFT JOIN incident i ON s.id = i.student 
WHERE p.id = s.person_id AND s.year_group LIKE "%Year 9%";

However, it ignores any students without an incident which is not what I want - they should be displayed but with a count of 0. If I remove the left join and the count then I get all the students as I would expect.

I've probably misunderstood left join but I thought it was supposed to do, essentially what I'm trying to do?

Thanks for your help,

Adam

Paul Dixon Paul Dixon · Accepted Answer · 2009-01-08T13:10:15

What you are doing is fine, you just missed off the group by clause

SELECT p.first_name, p.last_name, COUNT(i.student)
FROM person p, student s  LEFT JOIN incident i ON s.id = i.student 
WHERE p.id = s.person_id AND s.year_group LIKE "%Year 9%"
GROUP BY p.first_name, p.last_name;

Here's some test data

insert into person values(1, 'student', 'Alice', 'Foo', 'f','1970-01-01');
insert into person values(2, 'student', 'Bob', 'Bar', 'm','1970-01-01');

insert into student values(1,1,0,0,'', 'current','','Year 9');
insert into student values(2,2,0,0,'', 'current','','Year 9');

insert into incident values(1,1,0,0,0,'flu','chicken soup', '2008-01-08');

And here's the output of the query with the group by added to it:

+------------+-----------+------------------+
| first_name | last_name | COUNT(i.student) |
+------------+-----------+------------------+
| Alice      | Foo       |                1 |
| Bob        | Bar       |                0 |
+------------+-----------+------------------+

You could further clean up the query by making join clauses from your where clause, and grouping on the person id:

SELECT p.first_name, p.last_name, COUNT(i.student)
FROM person p
INNER JOIN student s ON(p.id = s.person_id)
LEFT JOIN incident i ON(s.id = i.student)
WHERE s.year_group LIKE "%Year 9%"
GROUP BY p.id;

Why is this LEFT JOIN eliminating records with nothing in the other table?

4 Answers