Good design? Bad design? Problems..

[jbfraleigh]

I'm going to make up names and values -- I'm interested in the structure.

Table ALPHA:

COLA DAT1 DAT2 DAT3
1 5 7 9
2 4 14 8


Table BETA:

COLA_IND DAT1 DAT2 DATN
1 a b c

Table CHARLIE:

COLA_IND DAT1 DAT2
2 d e

Table DELTA:

COLA_IND DAT1 DAT2
2 f g


Ok, the idea here is that the data in table ALPHA contains data with COLA a key such that selecting 2 would yield the data row "4, 14, 8."

Now, COLA_IND is a "COLA" key for table ALPHA (sorry, I can never remember which side is called the foreign key). So, from tables BETA, CHARLIE and DELTA, I can access any row in ALPHA based on the key "COLA_IND"

Here's the fun part. When I build my query, it wants to use an inner join on the keys from all these tables... In order words:

SELECT blah blah blah INNER JOIN blah ON (ALPHA.COLA=BETA.COLA_IND) AND (ALPHA.COLA=CHARLIE.COLA_IND) AND (ALPHA.COLA=DELTA.COLA_IND)

What I'm looking to do is expand BETA, CHARLIE and DELTA with the information from ALPHA based on the key COLA_IND. I don't think this is doing what I want.

Any comments?

Thanks in advance...

 

[FoFa]

SELECT blah blah blah
INNER JOIN BETA ON (ALPHA.COLA=BETA.COLA_IND)
INNER JOIN CHARLIE On (ALPHA.COLA=CHARLIE.COLA_IND)
INNER JOIN DELTA ON (ALPHA.COLA=DELTA.COLA_IND)