table query and lookup of another table in 1 statement?

[ffej2ffej]

My scripts are doing a lookup of transactions in table B. Each transaction contains an integer which is an ID of the business for each transaction. I also want the name (a varchar) of the business in the original transaction. My solution was to do a 2nd lookup for each transaction record and this works, but I would like to be able to sort the 1st transaction by the business name. I suspect the answer is to do a left-join transaction and get the name from that. However, I've never mastered left join and even though I looked it up again, I'm still not sure how it works. So, let me give an example of how I'm doing it now and maybe someone can suggest a better way.

$queryString = select * from tableB;//(truth be told, table B is called 'trips')
$result = mysqli....
while($array=mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)
{
 $queryString2 = select bizname from tableA where ID = $array[ID]//(tableA is called 'companies')

Any help would be appreciated.
Jeff Sandler

[rproffitt]

While I don't claim to solve this I always cringe when I see the "select *" in any query. There are a lot of articles why you always check for this and I don't know the table structure so I can't guess if you need all in the result set. Do you?

I've fixed many SQL speed problems on this alone. Worth checking.

[David_111]

select a.bizname, b.col1, b.col2, b.col3 from table a, tableB where a.ID = b.ID;
I don't thinks an outer join is needed, and it's true a select * is a bad ...

[pty]

It's annoying when people ask a straight up SQL question and wrap everything in $LANGUAGE.

To cut a long story short, what you need is a join.