Alternative to self-joins??

I have a table that has values of variables for certain entities. The
columns of interest are targetID, variableID, and valueID. A row (1, 5,
9) means that target number 1 has a value of 9 for variable 5. Being
denormalized, target number one will have many possible rows in this
table, one for each variable for which it has a value.

My problem occurs when I want to find out what targets match a certain
set of variable values. For instance, I want to find out what targets
have a value of 9 for variable 5 and a value of 25 for variable 10. I'm
thinking that this can be a simple self-join:

SELECT mya.targetID from mytable as mya
LEFT JOIN mytable as myb
ON mya.targetID=myb.targetID
WHERE (mya.variableID=5 AND mya.valueID=9)
AND (myb.variableID=10 AND myb.valueID=25)

Does this make sense so far? The problem is that this doesn't scale.
When I have more than 31 variables and I need to evaluate them all,
MySQL breaks: I can't do more than 31 joins.

My design calls for perhaps 80-100 variables, so even 64-bit
architecture with a limit of 64 joins won't get me there.

I need another data structure that won't get me stuck on too many
joins. Any suggestions? If I have to scrap this approach in favor of
another, I can do that; even some clues on what direction to head out
on would be helpful. I'm stuck at the present. Thanks.

re: Alternative to self-joins??

nuked@bway.net wrote:[color=blue]
> My design calls for perhaps 80-100 variables, so even 64-bit
> architecture with a limit of 64 joins won't get me there.
>
> I need another data structure that won't get me stuck on too many
> joins. Any suggestions?[/color]

Not every SQL task can be done in a single statement. Or at least,
doing it in a single statement is so difficult that it's not worth the
time spent to develop and maintain the solution.

You could do this in a straightforward and scalable way by iterating
through the tests:

CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE joinSat (
targetID INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
join_satisfied TINYINT NOT NULL DEFAULT 1
);

Prime the temp table with the list of all targetID's:

INSERT INTO joinSatisfied (targetID, join_satisfied)
SELECT DISTINCT targetID, 1 FROM mytable;

Then for each variable test, change the join_satisfied field to 0 if you
can't find matching targetID's associated with the value you're looking
for. You could use MySQL's multi-table UPDATE syntax.

UPDATE joinSatisfied LEFT OUTER JOIN myTable
ON (j.targetID = m.targetID AND m.variableID = 5 AND m.valueID = 9);
SET joinSatisfied.bool = 0
WHERE myTable.targetID IS NULL;

UPDATE joinSatisfied LEFT OUTER JOIN myTable
ON (j.targetID = m.targetID AND m.variableID = 10 AND m.valueID = 25);
SET joinSatisfied.bool = 0
WHERE myTable.targetID IS NULL;

....etc.

Repeat the UPDATE statement for each of your variables that you're
looking for, and in the end your temp table has a 1 for each targetID
that satisfied all the tests, and 0 otherwise.

SELECT t.*
FROM targetMasterTable AS t INNER JOIN joinSatisfied as j
ON (t.targetID = j.targetID)
WHERE j.bool = 1;

Regards,
Bill K.