Re: SELECT on a to-be-determined table

garhone wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I'm a new at this. So please forgive if I mess up. Also, if there is
>already a reference/tutorial somewhere, feel free to point me to it.
>
>Here's my situation:
>db=# select * from projects;
> projid | projname
>--------+----------
> 1 | cars
> 2 | houses
> 3 | pets
>(3 rows)
>
>db=# select * from cars;
> carid | carname
>-------+---------
> 1 | ford
> 2 | mazda
>(2 rows)
>
>db=# select * from houses;
> houseid | housename
>---------+-----------
> 1 | semi
> 2 | trailer
> 3 | mansion
>(3 rows)
>
>db=# select * from pets;
> petid | petname
>-------+---------
> 1 | dog
> 2 | cat
> 3 | bird
>(3 rows)
>
>Is it possible to do this:
>Give me all the rows of the table whose project id is 2 (or whatever
>projid).
>
>Thanks
>
>
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Your way of thinking leads to the need of comparing a field to a table name.
Such a request requires two steps
1 - retrieve the name of the table to search in, store it in a variable
2 - use execute to issue a request to that table.

Instead, I think it would be better to use only two tables:
1 - projects (projid, projname)
2 - items (itemid, projid, itemproperty1,itemidproperty2,...)
You would have in the second table, to take your example:
projid | itemid | itemname |
1 | 1 | ford |
1 | 2 | mazda |
2 | 1 | semi |
2 | 2 | trailer |
2 | 3 | mansion |
3 | 1 | dog |
3 | 2 | cat |
3 | 3 | bird |
Your request would become :
SELECT itemid, itemname FROM items where projid=2

The problem of having a different set of properties
for the items of differents projects could be solved with three tables:
project(projid, projname)
itempropertymeaning(projid, propid, propmeaning)
itemproperty(projid, itemid, propid, propvalue)