title: Joining Multiple Tables - Oracle
body: <p>I'm studying multiple table joins this week and have some odd results being returned. Here is the scenario...</p>
  
  <p><em>Using the correct tables, create a query using the traditional join operation that will list the customer first and last name, book title, and order date (formatted as MM/DD/YYYY with an alias of “Order Date”) for all the customers who have purchased books published by 'PRINTING IS US'.</em></p>
  
  <p>With the database that I'm querying against, the correct tables for this query are BOOK_CUSTOMER, BOOKS, BOOK_ORDER, and PUBLISHER. The statement that I have written returns the information that I need, but it is returning almost 5900 records. I don't see how this can be right. The publisher, Printing is Us, only has 14 books listed in the database and there are only 20 customer records, so even if every customer purchased every Printing is Us book, that would only return 280 records total. Yet I can't figure out what I have wrong. My statement is listed below.</p>
  
  <pre><code>SELECT bc.firstname, bc.lastname, b.title, TO_CHAR(bo.orderdate, 'MM/DD/YYYY') "Order Date", p.publishername
  FROM book_customer bc, books b, book_order bo, publisher p
  WHERE(publishername = 'PRINTING IS US');
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Anyone have any thoughts on what I'm missing here??</p>
  
  <p>Thanks.</p>