ORDER
orderID
orderDate

ORDERITEM
orderItemID
orderID
OrderDescription

These tables have a one-to-many relationship, as in each order can have multiple order items. The objective of the SQL statement was to return all the orders with a count of how many order items each order had. My first solution involved using a join:

SELECT Orders.OrderID, Orders.OrderDate, COUNT(OrderItems.OrderItemID) AS NoOfItems
FROM Orders LEFT JOIN OrderItems on Orders.OrderID = OrderItems.OrderID
GROUP BY Orders.OrderID, Orders.OrderDate

This achieved the objective but it was pointed out that I could have just used a subquery. Using a subquery is simpler as well as avoids some of the possible issues using JOINs:

SELECT Orders.OrderId,
       Orders.OrderDate,
       (SELECT COUNT(*)
        FROM OrderItems
        WHERE Orders.OrderID = OrderItems.OrderID) AS NoOfItems
FROM Orders

Ta-da! Two ways to get a count of items from the ‘many’ table in a one-to-many relationship. Pretty simple stuff but posted here for your convenience.

You get absolutely no advantage using an HDMI cable like this:
http://www.gspr.com/wireworld/ps_hdmi.html

Expensive optical cables also have no advantage. At the minimum all you need is a cable that doesn’t fall apart.

Theoretically, higher quality speaker cables *can* improve sound, however the improvements are most likely outside the realm of human hearing. There have been comparison tests with using coat hanger wire vs. using a high-quality speaker wire and listeners were unable to tell the difference.

My recommendation for any of your cable needs:
http://www.monoprice.com

Apparently, though, Nothing, Ariz. is under new management. According to his website, PizzaMan Mike is rebuilding the “town” and will be serving up pizza there. I hope to be able to check it out again soon!

My last post had me thinking about photography. I thought I’d look through my flickr photos to see which one was my favorite. I think after all this time, this beach photo is still the one that I like the best. It was taken with a Minolta manual-focus film camera circa spring 1998. I think that while digital comes close to film (and in some ways surpasses), I don’t think that the warmth of film is yet matched.

In other news since my last posting: I suppose the biggest event is I got married in September and we were fortunate enough to be able to buy a house. I’ve slowly been decorating it. Slowly, mostly because of the next biggest event: I was laid off in July. So, I’ve also been busy going to interviews and all that fun stuff. Hopefully that situation will resolve itself soon (either by landing a new job or winning the lottery).

I’ve been putting photography on the back burner. I really need to do some more of that, but I have trouble finding things I’d be interested in photographing. Need to do some brainstorming on that one, I guess.

That’s all for now. I’ll try to be a little more interesting with my blog, or at least blog more regularly…