Sammy..
A quick and dirty approach is something like this:
id|threadid|emailid|referenceid|pathlevel
---------------------------------------
1|t101|e323|null|0
2|t101|e545|e323|1
3|t101|e822|e545|2
4|t101|e999|e323|1
etc..
Do the sorting when you insert the records. Then they can be quickly &
easily retrieved. Otherwise you're looking at a recursive query. Not very
efficient. This way is crude but allows the engine to optimize queries with
indexes.
HTH
Jim
"Sammy" <sammynash@uboot.com> wrote in message
news:6729af8d.0305160646.d9ab2d2@posting.google.com...
> Hi,
>
> I have a SQL problem for you all. What SQL qurey would I have to make
> on the following table to extract the chain (thread) of emails in a
> conversation.
>
>
> id|emailid|referenceid
> -----------------------
> 1| e125 | Null (Start of chain)
> 2| r1fe | e125 (2nd letter in chain)
> ...
> ...
> n| e4ju | r1fe (3rd in chain)
>
> ie
> a sucessulf qurey would return rows 1,2 & n because they are all in
> the chain.
>
> Hope you can help me with my problem,
