alt Hacker NewsFrankly I don't think that overcounting is solved by normalizing, because it's easy to write an overcounting SQL query over perfectly normalized data.
I tried to explain the real cause of overcounting in my "Modern Guide to SQL JOINs":
https://kb.databasedesignbook.com/posts/sql-joins/#understan...
Replies
estetlinus • last Wednesday at 7:32 AM
Great read, thank you!
I'll go one further and say that if you're reaching for DISTINCT and you have joins, you may have joined the data the wrong way. It's not a RULE, but it's ALWAYS a 'smell' when I see a query that uses DISTINCT to shove away duplicate matches. I always add a comment for the exceptions.