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How would I write this query and not get the error, "Subquery returns more than one row"?

Posted on 2016-08-24

4 solutions

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Last Modified: 2016-08-30

I've got a table that reflects a payment has recently been made and it has a id of 6558.

In an other table, I've got a column called "payment_id" and it has in the same row another column called "programs."

I want to find out in the context of a single SELECT statement whether or not the "program" that corresponds to that payment is one of several types. I wrote it like this:

select p.* from payment p where p.student_id='51' OR p.sibling_1='Kimberley Oakley' OR p.sibling_2='Kimberley Oakley' OR p.sibling_3='Kimberley Oakley' AND p.id = (select pr.payment_id from programs pr where pr.program='After School' OR pr.program='Night Classes' OR pr.program='Camp' or pr.program='Hapkido' OR pr.program='Krav Maga') order by p.payment_date DESC LIMIT 1

So, I'm looking for one payment in the payment table and I want to ensure that the only payments returned in my recordset were payments for either the "After School" program, the "Night Classes" program, the "Camp" program, "Hapkido" and "Krav Maga."

There shouldn't be more than one row in the subquery, since there's only one payment id. What am I doing wrong?

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Question by:brucegust

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6 Comments

LVL 2

Accepted Solution

by:Kyaw Wanna

Kyaw Wanna earned 250 total points

ID: 417697002016-08-24

Please try the following statement in your query syntax :

Your Current Statement

p.id = (select pr.payment_id

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Please change to

p.id in (select pr.payment_id

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LVL 29

Expert Comment

by:Olaf Doschke

ID: 417698042016-08-24

>There shouldn't be more than one row in the subquery, since there's only one payment id.
Well, if you do

select pr.payment_id from programs pr where pr.program='After School' OR pr.program='Night Classes' OR pr.program='Camp' or pr.program='Hapkido' OR pr.program='Krav Maga'

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Doesn't that have 5 IDs?

You can't compare 1 ID with 5 IDs, that's what the error is about, the subquery, not p.id, you simply ignore what the error states, it's totally clear about what is wrong.

You can use the IN operation, as Kyaw Wanna said, you can test, whether one ID is in a list of 5 IDs.

No points for me, please, give them to him.

Bye, Olaf.

LVL 110

Assisted Solution

by:Ray Paseur

Ray Paseur earned 100 total points

ID: 417700672016-08-25

There shouldn't be more than one row in the subquery, since there's only one payment id.

You might want to use some kind of tool like phpMyAdmin to inspect the table. Is the payment id marked UNIQUE? Or is it an AUTO_INCREMENT key? If not, you may be looking at data pollution.

If it is UNIQUE, you might move your ORDER clause into the subquery. If you need a better answer, please show us the table structure and the test data, then we can give you a tested-and-working example!

LVL 49

Assisted Solution

by:PortletPaul

PortletPaul earned 100 total points

ID: 417701052016-08-25

WHERE pr.program = 'After School'
                  OR pr.program = 'Night Classes'
                  OR pr.program = 'Camp'
                  OR pr.program = 'Hapkido'
                  OR pr.program = 'Krav Maga'

Open in new window

From just that where clause it seems that there are (at least) 5 possible programs so 5 possible rows could be returned. Even if all rows have the same payment_id there is still the possibility of more than one row. It is the number of rows being greater than one that causes the error message.

There are a variety of remedies. Using IN(...) has already been suggested and is probably the easiest to implement. Another approach is to use EXISTS, e.g.

SELECT
      p.*
FROM payment p
WHERE p.student_id = '51'
      OR p.sibling_1 = 'Kimberley Oakley'
      OR p.sibling_2 = 'Kimberley Oakley'
      OR p.sibling_3 = 'Kimberley Oakley'
      AND EXISTS (
            SELECT 1  
            FROM programs pr
            WHERE (pr.program = 'After School'
                  OR pr.program = 'Night Classes'
                  OR pr.program = 'Camp'
                  OR pr.program = 'Hapkido'
                  OR pr.program = 'Krav Maga')
                  AND pr.payment_id =  p.id
      )
ORDER BY
      p.payment_date DESC
LIMIT 1
;

Open in new window

LVL 2

Assisted Solution

by:neehar gollapudi

neehar gollapudi earned 50 total points

ID: 417709472016-08-25

Did you try using cross apply( select top 1 id)

Author Comment

by:brucegust

ID: 417763682016-08-30

Guys, I wound up accomplishing what needed to be done by breaking the query down into a series of if statements. Rather than trying to do all of the heavy lifting in the context of one SELECT, I just narrowed things down incrementally through a couple of if statements. Bottom line: It worked and the project is out the door, but I will keep your counsel written down. No doubt this will come up again.

Thanks!

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