Forum: Bug Report and Feature Requests

So far I've been unable to craft an SQL query to allow sorting by author and remove the duplicates.

Of course not :D because it's impossible. If you sort by author both authors for the same book have too be in the list hence the book appears double. I bet Rebirth from John Wales & Dr. Stan & Wires appears three times.

It is my understanding that when I bookmark a story, I create a link to a specific story file (i.e., a story by a specific author) not to the name of the story.

If that is true, then other stories that have the same story name should not appear in a list of bookmarked stories.

Other stories that just happen to have the same name should not appear of course.
But the "Rebirth" story I gave as an example is a single story written by the three mentioned authors. So adding that story would add all three authors. Then sort by author and you will have the story listed for each author, hence three times.

ETA: With all three authors the story Rebirth has story-id 54677 which clearly proves that it is one and the same story by three authors.

So far I've been unable to craft an SQL query to allow sorting by author and remove the duplicates.

It's been a long time since I did any SQL, but have you tried using UNIQUE (or DISTINCT depending on your SQL implementation)? May be along side GROUP BY? Not sure how you have your tables sent up.

It's been a long time since I did any SQL, but have you tried using UNIQUE (or DISTINCT depending on your SQL implementation)? May be along side GROUP BY? Not sure how you have your tables sent up.

That's not gonna help. The problem is when sorting by author which makes author the main index field. In my previous example three authors wrote together on one story so that story will show up three times no matter how you format the SQL query because all three authors should be in the list.

In my previous example three authors wrote together on one story so that story will show up three times no matter how you format the SQL query because all three authors should be in the list.

Exactly. It isn't a bug because as you rightly say, each author should be in the list.

Given that relatively few stories are co-authored, does it really need fixing? I'm sure Lazeez has better things to do.

@MrWolf_UK

It's been a long time since I did any SQL, but have you tried using UNIQUE (or DISTINCT depending on your SQL implementation)? May be along side GROUP BY? Not sure how you have your tables sent up.

That's not gonna help. The problem is when sorting by author which makes author the main index field.

You see the duplicates even when not sorted by author.

UNIQUE or Distinct on title won't do it because then you potentially have problems with different stories by different authors with the same title.

You see the duplicates even when not sorted by author.

Of course, because if a story has three authors you want to either see three pen names after the story or see the story three times with each of the authors. It's how data works, nothing special about it.

I solved it by creating a separate query for when the author name is used for sorting.

That was going to be my next suggestion :)