MySQL Query Help

Question

Is there an easy way to find all records where an ID is found
in a list? For example if I have the following:
TABLE:
resource
FIELDS:
resourceID | listOfIDs | title
RECORDS:
1 | 1,7,9 | Item 1
2 | 2,3,7,8 | Item 2
3 | 8,17 | Item 3
4 | 2,7 | Item 4
I want to query the table for all records where listOfIDs
contains 7. This would return 1, 2 and 3. OR I may want to find
where listOfIDs contains 2 AND 8. This would return 2, 3 and 4.
Normally I would use a second table and have each one of the
list items as a record that links to the resourceID but I'm going
to have 6 different "listOfIDs" type columns so I was just trying
to see if there is a better way.
Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

dbldutch wrote:
> Normally I would use a second table and have each one of
the list items as a
> record that links to the resourceID but I'm going to
have 6 different
> "listOfIDs" type columns so I was just trying to see if
there is a better way.
>
The second related table *IS* the better way. This is why
entire
database doctorate thesis are written on data normalization.
Trust
them, six related tables will be much easier then six columns
each
containing a list of numbers.
Why, because a list of numbers is not a list of numbers to a
database,
it is a string. And the only way to search it is inefficient
string
functions. Your where clause is going to have to look
something like this:
WHERE listOfIDs LIKE '7,%' OR listOfIDs LIKE '%,7,%' OR
listOfIDs like '%,7'
And that is just to search for one possible value in the
list, this
complexity progresses exponentially with each additional
number for
which to search.