Understanding SQL Joins - One Step Left...

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Let's move on to outer joins. You'll remember, from a few pages back, that inner joins are symmetrical - in order to be included in the final resultset, rows must match in all joined tables. Outer joins, on the other hand, are asymmetrical - all rows from one side of the join are included in the final resultset, regardless of whether or not they match rows on the other side of the join.

This might seem a little complicated, but an example should soon clear that up. Consider the following SQL query:

SELECT * FROM a LEFT JOIN b ON a1 = b1;

In English, this translates to "select all the rows from the left side of the join (table a) and, for each row selected, either display the matching value from the right side (table b) or display an empty row". This kind of join is known as a "left join" or, sometimes, a "left outer join".

Here's the result:

+----+------+------+------+
| a1 | a2   | b1   | b2   |
+----+------+------+------+
| 10 | u    |   10 | p    |
| 20 | v    |   20 | q    |
| 30 | w    | NULL | NULL |
| 40 | x    | NULL | NULL |
| 50 | y    | NULL | NULL |
| 60 | z    | NULL | NULL |
+----+------+------+------+
6 rows in set (0.06 sec)

As you can see, all the rows from the left side of the join - table "a" - appear in the final resultset. Those which have a corresponding value on the right side - table "b" - as per the match criteria a1 = b1 have that value displayed; the rest have a null row displayed.

This kind of join comes in very handy when you need to see which values from one table are missing in another table - all you need to do is look for the null rows. Just from a quick glance at the example above, it's fairly easy to see that rows 30-60 are present in table "a", but absent in table "b". This technique also comes in handy when you're looking for corrupted, or "dirty", data.

In fact, you can even save your eyeballs the trouble of scanning the output - just let SQL do it for you, with an additional WHERE clause:

SELECT a1 FROM a LEFT JOIN b ON a1 = b1 WHERE b1 IS NULL;

Here's the output:

+----+
| a1 |
+----+
| 30 |
| 40 |
| 50 |
| 60 |
+----+
4 rows in set (0.05 sec)

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