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I have two tables
1st table :-
id name dept
1 John dept1
2 Mary dept2
3 Dave dept3
4 John dept4
5 John dept5
2nd table :-
id submitter dept
1 Rupert dept3
2 Joe dept1
3 Lisa dept2
4 Louise dept4
5 Tom dept5
what i would like is a query to allow people in the name column in the first table to only show records based on their matching departments eg John in table one will return the 3 records in table 2 (id 2,4 and 5)
So far i have tried SELECT * FROM table1, table2 WHERE table1.dept = table2.dept AND table1.name='John'
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If I correctly understand your problem, you need to make a join between the two tables using the field dept and filter your results by the name of the requester, in the first table.
SELECT t2.submitter, t2.dept
FROM table1 t1
LEFT JOIN table2 t2 ON t1.dept = t2.dept
WHERE t1.name = :person_name
Documentation and examples (you can also look at the left menu at Inner, right, full and self join's).