[thelist] (SQL) Query with Multi FK's to the same lookup

[Tab Alleman]

Hassan Schroeder wrote:
> Tab Alleman wrote:
>> Suppose you've got a table with some products that can be rated for
>> various qualities, and you've got a lookup table that associates a
>> description with the rating: 
>> 
>> Products Table:
>> Prod_ID	OverallRating	FeaturesRating	ValueRating
>> 1		3			1			5
>> 2		4			4			4
>> 3		4			2			5
>> ...
>> 
>> Rating Table:
>> Rating	Description
>> 1		Poor
>> 2		Fair
>> 3		Average
>> 4		Good
>> 5		Excellent
>> 
>> 
>> I'm trying to think of a way to return a recordset of each Prod_ID
>> with the Description associated with each rating:
> 
> Frankly, if this were MySQL, at least, I'd redefine all the rating
> columns to ENUM('Poor','Fair','Average','Good','Excellent'); you'd
> use your existing numeric insert/update statements but would get a
> string back on selects...

Hard-coding like this isn't desirable in this case because if I ever
need to change "Excellent" to "Superior", for instance, I'd have to
change it in all my SQL queries instead of in the lookup table.