Issue with Join query

Question

Question 1:
I have run into an issue of join between the two tables.
There are two tables named a and b with the following descriptions -
desc a
Name Null Type
STORE_NUMBER NOT NULL CHAR(9)
ASSORTMENT_NUMBER NOT NULL CHAR(9)
ITEM_NUMBER NOT NULL CHAR(9)
DESCRIPTION CHAR(1000)
UPC_CODE NOT NULL CHAR(15)
STOCK_FLAG CHAR(1)
AVG_RTL_PRICE CHAR(16)
SALES_MOVEMENT CHAR(16)
PROD_STYLE CHAR(50)
COLOR CHAR(50)
ATT_1 CHAR(50)
ATT_2 CHAR(50)
ATT_3 CHAR(50)
ATT_4 CHAR(50)
ATT_5 CHAR(50)
ATT_6 CHAR(50)
ATT_7 CHAR(50)
ATT_8 CHAR(50)
ATT_9 CHAR(50)
ATT_10 CHAR(50)
ATT_11 CHAR(50)
ATT_12 CHAR(50)
ATT_13 CHAR(50)
ATT_14 CHAR(50)
ATT_15 CHAR(50)
25 rows selected
desc b
Name Null Type
ASSORTMENT_NUMBER NOT NULL CHAR(9)
ITEM_NUMBER NOT NULL CHAR(9)
MERCH_METHOD NOT NULL VARCHAR2(15)
UPC_CODE NOT NULL CHAR(15)
MODEL_NUMBER CHAR(50)
HEIGHT CHAR(10)
WIDTH CHAR(10)
DEPTH CHAR(10)
IMAGE_FILE_NAME CHAR(500)
LINESHAPE_FILE_NAME CHAR(500)
IPU CHAR(10)
ASSORTMENT_NAME VARCHAR2(100)
12 rows selected
There are 23094 records for assortment_number 16370 in the table a and 123 records in the table b.
But, when I run the below query using matching assortment number and upc code, its returning more than 2.5 million records. Why is it doing a product?
select
a.store_number,
a.assortment_number,
a.item_number,
a.description,
a.upc_code,
a.avg_rtl_price,
a.sales_movement,
b.height,
b.width,
b.depth,
b.merch_method,
b.model_number,
b.ipu,
b.assortment_name
from a,
b
where
ltrim(trim(a.assortment_number),0) = ltrim(trim(b.assortment_number),0)
and ltrim(trim(a.assortment_number),0) = ‘16370’
and
ltrim(trim(b.upc_code),0) = ltrim(trim(b.upc_code),0);
Question 2 -
Can I break the query down by store numbers from both the tables and extract them to separate files by store numbers?
Appreciate your inputs. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

853720 wrote:
But how do I fix my query so as to return not the product of the two tables but only the unique matching records based on assortment_number and upc_code ?And what is "unique matching record" Based on table B each assortment has multiple items. So it looks like table B uniqueness is on assortment_number, item_number. So question is what is column upc_code? Is it assortment upc or item upc? If it is not item upc - you got your unswer. Actually, I just noticed:
ltrim(trim(<font size=4 color=red>b</font>.upc_code),0) = ltrim(trim(<font size=4 color=red>b</font>.upc_code),0);It should be:
ltrim(trim(<font size=4 color=red>a</font>.upc_code),0) = ltrim(trim(<font size=4 color=red>b</font>.upc_code),0);SY.
P.S. I am not questioning column datatypes at this point, but they obviously indicate bad design. You should at least use VARCHAR2 instead of CHAR.