Puzzled by a SELECT statement

[mattblack_uk]

I'm quite new to MySQL and struggling with a MySQL SELECT Statement.

I'm working with 3 tables which are as follows:

Table 1
User ID
Username

Table 2
Message ID
Author ID (linked to 1.User ID)
Subject
Message Text

Table 3
Message ID
Author ID
Reciever ID

These are obviously not the complete tables however they will suffice to explain my problem. I should let you know that I have to work with these and cannot amend them in any way.

I would like to do a SELECT that will give me the author username, reciever username, subject, and text

however according to my limited knowledge, this would work out as follows:

SELECT Table1.username, Table1.username, Table1.subject etc....

So my question is how can I tell MySQL what to associate with each instance of username?

[guelphdad]

you would do a self join on the TABLE 1 and give it two different aliases, and then join your other tables.