Follow a Loan to Its Member

A loan row identifies Riley as member 17, but a useful report should show MB-017 and Riley, not make its reader look up that ID by hand.

Open report.sql. Its current query starts from loans and shows member_id. We need one row from members for each loan. These are the values that line up:

Add this line after FROM loans:

INNER JOIN members ON members.id = loans.member_id

An inner join keeps rows whose ON comparison finds a match on both sides. The comparison uses the relationship you already declared. It does not compare the loan’s own ID or the item ID.

Then replace loans.member_id in the selected columns with:

members.member_code,
members.name AS member_name,

The table names qualify each column, making its source explicit. The alias gives the second name a useful result heading. Keep loans.id AS loan_id, the two date columns, and ORDER BY loans.id.

Press Run. The report.sql section should begin:

loan_id | member_code | member_name | checked_out_on | returned_on
501 | MB-017 | Riley | 2026-08-18 | NULL

All three visible loans have matching members, so all three remain in this inner-join report. Submit uses IDs that do not happen to resemble one another and gives two members the same displayed name. That makes the relationship, rather than a lucky number or name, decide the result.

This query has one clear path: start with a loan, match its member_id to members.id, and select the member facts from that matched row. Now you can follow the loan’s other relationship too.