SQL statement - "join" vs "group by and having"

Question

This is a very basic query I can't figure out....

Let's say I have a two column table like this:

userid  -  roleid
1  -  1
1  -  2
1  -  3
2  -  1

I want to get all distinct userids that have roleids 1, 2 AND 3. Using the above example, the only result I want returned is userid 1. How do I do this?

Answer 1

Ok, I got downvoted on this so I decided to test it:

CREATE TABLE userrole (
  userid INT,
  roleid INT,
  PRIMARY KEY (userid, roleid)
);

CREATE INDEX ON userrole (roleid);

Run this:

<?php
ini_set('max_execution_time', 120); // takes over a minute to insert 500k+ records 

$start = microtime(true);

echo "<pre>\n";
mysql_connect('localhost', 'scratch', 'scratch');
if (mysql_error()) {
    echo "Connect error: " . mysql_error() . "\n";
}
mysql_select_db('scratch');
if (mysql_error()) {
    echo "Selct DB error: " . mysql_error() . "\n";
}

$users = 200000;
$count = 0;
for ($i=1; $i<=$users; $i++) {
    $roles = rand(1, 4);
    $available = range(1, 5);
    for ($j=0; $j<$roles; $j++) {
     $extract = array_splice($available, rand(0, sizeof($available)-1), 1);
     $id = $extract[0];
     query("INSERT INTO userrole (userid, roleid) VALUES ($i, $id)");
     $count++;
    }
}

$stop = microtime(true);
$duration = $stop - $start;
$insert = $duration / $count;

echo "$count users added.\n";
echo "Program ran for $duration seconds.\n";
echo "Insert time $insert seconds.\n";
echo "</pre>\n";

function query($str) {
    mysql_query($str);
    if (mysql_error()) {
     echo "$str: " . mysql_error() . "\n";
    }
}
?>

Output:

499872 users added.
Program ran for 56.5513510704 seconds.
Insert time 0.000113131663847 seconds.

That adds 500,000 random user-role combinations and there are approximately 25,000 that match the chosen criteria.

First query:

SELECT userid
FROM userrole
WHERE roleid IN (1, 2, 3)
GROUP by userid
HAVING COUNT(1) = 3

Query time: 0.312s

SELECT t1.userid
FROM userrole t1
JOIN userrole t2 ON t1.userid = t2.userid AND t2.roleid = 2
JOIN userrole t3 ON t2.userid = t3.userid AND t3.roleid = 3
AND t1.roleid = 1

Query time: 0.016s

That's right. The join version I proposed is twenty times faster than the aggregate version.

Sorry but I do this for a living and work in the real world and in the real world we test SQL and the results speak for themselves.

The reason for this should be pretty clear. The aggregate query will scale in cost with the size of the table. Every row is processed, aggregated and filtered (or not) through the HAVING clause. The join version will (using an index) select a subset of the users based on a given role, then check that subset against the second role and finally that subset against the third role. Each selection (in relational algebra terms) works on an increasingly small subset. From this you can conclude:

The performance of the join version gets even better with a lower incidence of matches.

If there were only 500 users (out of the 500k sample above) that had the three stated roles, the join version will get significantly faster. The aggregate version will not (and any performance improvement is a result of transporting 500 users instead of 25k, which the join version obviously gets too).

I was also curious to see how a real database (ie Oracle) would deal with this. So I basically repeated the same exercise on Oracle XE (running on the same Windows XP desktop machine as the MySQL from the previous example) and the results are almost identical.

Joins seem to be frowned upon but as I've demonstrated, aggregate queries can be an order of magnitude slower.

Update: After some extensive testing, the picture is more complicated and the answer will depend on your data, your database and other factors. The moral of the story is test, test, test.

Answer 2

If you need any kind of generality here (different 3-role combinations or different n-role combinations)...I'd suggest you use a bit masking system for your roles and use the bitwise operators to perform your queries...

Answer 3

SELECT userid
FROM UserRole
WHERE roleid IN (1, 2, 3)
GROUP BY userid
HAVING COUNT(DISTINCT roleid) = 3;

---

To anyone reading this: my answer is simple and straightforward, and got the 'accepted' status, but please do go read the answer given by @cletus. It has much better performance.

---

Justing thinking out loud, another way to write the self-join described by @cletus is:

SELECT t1.userid
FROM userrole t1
JOIN userrole t2 ON t1.userid = t2.userid
JOIN userrole t3 ON t2.userid = t3.userid
WHERE (t1.roleid, t2.roleid, t3.roleid) = (1, 2, 3);

This might be easier to read for you, and MySQL supports comparisons of tuples like that. MySQL also knows how to utilize covering indexes intelligently for this query. Just run it through EXPLAIN and see "Using index" in the notes for all three tables, which means it's reading the index and doesn't even have to touch the data rows.

I ran this query over 2.1 million rows (the Stack Overflow July data dump for PostTags) using MySQL 5.1.48 on my Macbook, and it returned the result in 1.08 sec. On a decent server with enough memory allocated to innodb_buffer_pool_size, it should be even faster.

Answer 4

Assuming userid, roleid are contained in a unique index (meaning there cannot be 2 records where userid = x and roleid = 1

select count(*), userid from t
where roleid in (1,2,3)
group by userid
having count(*) = 3

Answer 5

The classic way to do this is to treat it as a relational division problem.

In English: Select those users for whom none of the desired roleid values is missing.

I'll assume you have a Users table to which the UserRole table refers, and I'll assume the desired roleid values are in a table:

create table RoleGroup(
  roleid int not null,
  primary key(roleid)
)
insert into RoleGroup values (1);
insert into RoleGroup values (2);
insert into RoleGroup values (3);

I'll also assume all the relevant columns are not NULLable, so there are no surprises with IN or NOT EXISTS. Here's a SQL query that expresses the English above:

select userid from Users as U
where not exists (
  select * from RoleGroup as G
  where not exists (
    select * from UserRole as R
    where R.roleid = G.roleid
    and R.userid = U.userid
  )
);

Another way to write it is this

select userid from Users as U
where not exists (
  select * from RoleGroup as G
  where G.roleid not in (
    select * from UserRole as R
    where R.userid = U.userid
  )
);

This may or may not end up being efficient, depending on indexes, platform, data, etc. Search the web for "relational division" and you'll find a lot.