help with normalized table please

[kuau]

It seems to me you guys (Daniel & James, who have both helped me immensely with php over the years [thank you!]) are making this WAY more complicated than it needs to be. So, hopefully, I can finally help you with something. I may not be understanding exactly what you are trying to do, but this is how I would do it...

I simplified your table name to make it easier to follow. This is your code...

SELECT article.title, article.ID 
FROM article, artcat
WHERE artcat.cat_ID=13 
AND artcat.art_ID=article.ID 
AND artcat.cat_ID!=30 
AND artcat.cat_ID!=29 
ORDER BY title

First, I agree with Traq that you need another column... but in the article table, not the artcat table.... a simple 1/0 field that indicates whether the article should be visible or not.

SELECT * FROM articles WHERE art_id IN(SELECT art_id FROM artcat WHERE cat_id = 13) AND `active` = 1 ORDER BY `title`;

or, without the `active` column...

SELECT * FROM articles WHERE art_id IN(SELECT art_id FROM artcat WHERE cat_id = 13) AND `art_id` NOT IN(29,30, 47,etc) ORDER BY `title`;

There you have your data with no php filters required. No muss, no fuss.