What is the best solution to select from 3 tables bound together?

Question

I am pretty new in DB and I have the following situation: I have 2 main tables named VulnerabilityAlertDocument and VulnerabilitySolution.

The columns of these 2 tables are something like this:

VulnerabilityAlertDocument COLUMNS:

Id

VulnerabilityAlertId

SourceId BugTraqID

Title

..........

..........

..........

VulnerabilitySolution COLUMNS:

Id

Description

These 2 tables are related togheter by a many to many relation implemented by a third table named VulnerabilityAlertDocument_VulnerabilitySolution in which every row bound togheter a row of VulnerabilityAlertDocument with a row of VulnerabilitySolution (using the ids of these tables)

VulnerabilityAlertDocument_VulnerabilitySolution COLUMNS:

VulnerabilityAlertDocumentId

VulnerabilitySolutionId

Now my problem is: given the id of a VulnerabilityAlertDocument row I have to obtain all the related VulnerabilitySolution rows

So I have found two possible solution:

1) I use a JOIN between VulnerabilityAlertDocument_VulnerabilitySolution and VulnerabilitySolution table and I select using the VulnerabilityAlertDocument row id.

or

2) First I perform a query like this:

select * VulnerabilityAlertDocument_VulnerabilitySolution where VulnerabilityAlertDocumentID = 3

Thene I take the related value of VulnerabilitySolutionId of every obtained rows and I perform query on these

What is better? I think the solution that use the JOIN operator but I am not so sure

Answer 1

Choose 1, Go with inner join. Check this example. Inner join easily find your data.

declare @a table (id int, name varchar(50))  
declare @b table (id int, name varchar(50))
declare @c table (ida int, idb int)

insert into @a values(1,'a'),(2,'b'),(3,'c'),(4,'d'),(5,'e')

insert into @b values(1,'x'),(2,'y'),(3,'z')

insert into @c values(1,1),(1,2),(2,1),(2,3),(3,1),(3,2),(3,3)

declare @value int = 1

select 
    a.name, b.name
from 
    @c c
    inner join @a a on c.ida = a.id
    inner join @b b on c.ida = b.id
    where c.ida = 1  -- here you just comment and check the logic

Answer 2

Try this to join all related tables.

Select * from 
VulnerabilityAlertDocument d
join VulnerabilityAlertDocument_VulnerabilitySolution vs
on d.id = vs.VulnerabilityAlertDocumentId
join VulnerabilitySolution s
on s.id = vs.VulnerabilitySolutionId
where d.id = 3