SQL and Coldfusion left join tables getting duplicate results as a list in one column

Question

lets say I have two tables: Persons (P_Id, Name) and Orders (O_Id, OrderNo, P_Id)... I want to do a left join which would be:

SELECT Persons.Name, Orders.OrderNo         


        

Answer 1

What I really need to be able to get is one row for each person and all the OrderNo belonging to that person in a list.

No, you don't, you really, really don't.

You can do what you've already done, and loop through the results. When the first column changes value, you know you've moved on to a new person. One issue may be that you're returning the name again and again and again, once for each order id. In which case return two record sets, each in the same order...

SELECT Persons.P_Id, Persons.Name
FROM Persons
ORDER BY Persons.Name

SELECT Persons.P_Id, Orders.OrderNo
FROM Persons
INNER JOIN Orders
ON Persons.P_Id=Orders.P_Id
ORDER BY Persons.Name

(You don't need a LEFT JOIN now, because you can infer a person with no orders as you loop through the two record sets.)