Generating Depth based tree from Hierarchical Data in MySQL (no CTEs)

Question

Hi For many days I have been working on this problem in MySQL, however I can not figure it out. Do any of you have suggestions?

Basically, I have a category table wi

Answer 1

There are two common ways of storing hierarchical data in an RDBMS: adjacency lists (which you are using) and nested sets. There is a very good write-up about these alternatives in Managing Hierarchical Data in MySQL. You can only do what you want in a single query with the nested set model. However, the nested set model makes it more work to update the hierarchical structure, so you need to consider the trade-offs depending on your operational requirements.