Well ... since you asked. :P Let's use Abigail-II's suggestion as a model - i took liberty and made some changes though: 
mysql> select * from people;
+----+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| id | first | last  | birth | death |
+----+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|  1 | John  | Smith | NULL  | NULL  |
|  4 | Sally | Smith | NULL  | NULL  |
+----+-------+-------+-------+-------+

mysql> select * from characters;
+----+----------+---------+
| id | first    | last    |
+----+----------+---------+
|  1 | Jake     | Jones   |
|  2 | EvilJake | Jones   |
|  3 | Shelley  | Sellers |
+----+----------+---------+

mysql> select * from people_characters;
+--------+------------+
| people | characters |
+--------+------------+
|      1 |          1 |
|      1 |          2 |
|      4 |          3 |
+--------+------------+
So, if we want SQL to fetch all characters played by John Smith, we need to join characters to people via the people_characters table: 
my $sth = $dbh->prepare('
   SELECT characters.first, characters.last
   FROM characters
   INNER JOIN people_characters
   ON characters.id = people_characters.characters 
   INNER JOIN people
   ON people_characters.people = people.id 
   WHERE people.first = ?
   AND people.last = ?
   ORDER by characters.last, characters.first
');
$sth->execute(qw(John Smith));
while (my $row = $sth->fetchrow_hashref) {
   print "$row->{first} $row->{last}\n";
}

[download]
Now, if these tables were set up properly with Class::DBI, fetching the characters of a given person should be as easy as: 
use MyDBI::people;

my ($person)   = MyDBI::people->search(first=>'John', last=>'Smith');
my @characters = $person->characters;

[download]
I know that's a lot to digest (and wait until you need to add and delete people and/or characters!!), but hopefully this will be useful to you when you need it. Good luck. :)

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

In reply to 2Re: Normalisation Question (OT but trust me, perl implementation) by jeffa
in thread Normalisation Question (OT but trust me, perl implementation) by Cody Pendant

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