duplicate information

Hello,

I am joing 4 tables to retrieve data from an oracle database using Perl DBI. Once I recieve the data, I put it in xml format. Table A has 1 to many relationship with table B, C, and D. Table D has one to many releationship with table B and C. The problem is that every record I recieve I get a lot of duplicate information and I can not use distinct since I am joining multiple tables. The following is the select statement:

Select A.R_id,A.F_id,A.pg_cnt,A.r_date,A.name,A.addr1,A.addr2,A.addr3,A.addr4,B.r_nme,B.str1,B.str2,B.city,B.state,B.zip,C.stat,C.y_date,C.x_date,D.p_num,D.a_num from tableA A, tableB B, tableC C, tableD D

where A.b_code = '6'
and (B.FK_R_id = A.R_id and B.FK_F_id = A.F_id) 
and (C.FK_R_id = A.R_id and C.FK_F_id = A.F_id) 

and (D.FK_R_id = A.R_id and D.FK_F_id = A.F_id) and D.p_num IS NOT NULL

I will get thousands of records with duplicate information. Each record returned is unique, however
A.R_id,A.F_id,A.pg_cnt,A.r_date,A.name,A.addr1,A.addr2,A.addr3,A.addr4 is repeated for each B.r_nme or each D.p_num,D.a_num etc or A.R_id,A.F_id,A.pg_cnt,A.r_date,A.name,A.addr1,A.addr2,A.addr3,A.addr4,B.r_nme,B.str1,B.str2,B.city,B.state,B.zip,C.stat,C.y_date,C.x_date is repeated for each D.p_num...

How can I approach this problem so that for each record returned I ignore the duplicate information and get take the unique informaton for that A.R_id and A.F_id?

Any help is appreciated....

TIA Received on Wed Oct 10 2001 - 20:12:24 CEST