Monday, December 7, 2015

Inner Vs. Outer Join

What is the difference between and inner and out join in SQL?  I hear this question a lot (at work, when I conduct interviews, and when I'm interviewed).  The answer isn't as straight forward as you may think.  Here is a diagram from the article  "Visual Representation of SQL Joins" by C.L. Moffat that show's a visual representation of what each time of join does:



There are other good discussion on the difference between inner and outer joins found in Stack Overflow.

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