SQL tree traversal

Question

I am not totally sure I am naming this right, but please bear with me.

I am wondering if is possible to do something like this in SQL(MySQL specifically): Let\'s say

Answer 1

You're probably better of with the nested set model instead (see http://mikehillyer.com/articles/managing-hierarchical-data-in-mysql/ - further down). Its far more efficient for selects and you can get the complete path to each node with a simple self join. However, in practice it is a good idea to pre-cache path and depth if you want to do things like " where depth = 3" or want to show the complete path for multiple nodes if you have more than 1000 records in your table.