FULL OUTER JOIN vs. FULL JOIN
Just playing around with queries and examples to get a better understanding of joins. I'm noticing that in SQL Server 2008, the following two queries give the same results:
SELECT * FROM TableA
FULL OUTER JOIN TableB
ON TableA.name = TableB.name
SELECT * FROM TableA
FULL JOIN TableB
ON TableA.name = TableB.name
Are these performing exactly the same action to produce the same results, or would I run into different results in a more complicated example? Is this just interchangeable terminology?
Actually they are the same. LEFT OUTER JOIN
is same as LEFT JOIN
and RIGHT OUTER JOIN
is same as RIGHT JOIN
. It is more informative way to compare from INNER Join
.
See this Wikipedia article for details.
Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 uses these SQL-92 keywords for outer joins specified in a FROM clause:
LEFT OUTER JOIN or LEFT JOIN
RIGHT OUTER JOIN or RIGHT JOIN
FULL OUTER JOIN or FULL JOIN
From MSDN
The full outer join
or full join
returns all rows from both tables, matching up the rows wherever a match can be made and placing NULL
s in the places where no matching row exists.