What are the various join types in Spark?

Question

I looked at the docs and it says the following join types are supported:

Type of join to perform. Default inner. Must be one of: inner, cross, outer, full, full_outer, left, left_outer, right, right_outer, left_semi, left_anti.

I looked at the StackOverflow answer on SQL joins and top couple of answers do not mention some of the joins from above e.g. left_semi and left_anti. What do they mean in Spark?

Answer 1

Here is a simple illustrative experiment:

import org.apache.spark.sql._

object SparkSandbox extends App {
  implicit val spark = SparkSession.builder().master("local[*]").getOrCreate()
  import spark.implicits._
  spark.sparkContext.setLogLevel("ERROR")

  val left = Seq((1, "A1"), (2, "A2"), (3, "A3"), (4, "A4")).toDF("id", "value")
  val right = Seq((3, "A3"), (4, "A4"), (4, "A4_1"), (5, "A5"), (6, "A6")).toDF("id", "value")

  println("LEFT")
  left.orderBy("id").show()

  println("RIGHT")
  right.orderBy("id").show()

  val joinTypes = Seq("inner", "outer", "full", "full_outer", "left", "left_outer", "right", "right_outer", "left_semi", "left_anti")

  joinTypes foreach { joinType =>
    println(s"${joinType.toUpperCase()} JOIN")
    left.join(right = right, usingColumns = Seq("id"), joinType = joinType).orderBy("id").show()
  }
}

Output

LEFT
+---+-----+
| id|value|
+---+-----+
|  1|   A1|
|  2|   A2|
|  3|   A3|
|  4|   A4|
+---+-----+

RIGHT
+---+-----+
| id|value|
+---+-----+
|  3|   A3|
|  4|   A4|
|  4| A4_1|
|  5|   A5|
|  6|   A6|
+---+-----+

INNER JOIN
+---+-----+-----+
| id|value|value|
+---+-----+-----+
|  3|   A3|   A3|
|  4|   A4| A4_1|
|  4|   A4|   A4|
+---+-----+-----+

OUTER JOIN
+---+-----+-----+
| id|value|value|
+---+-----+-----+
|  1|   A1| null|
|  2|   A2| null|
|  3|   A3|   A3|
|  4|   A4|   A4|
|  4|   A4| A4_1|
|  5| null|   A5|
|  6| null|   A6|
+---+-----+-----+

FULL JOIN
+---+-----+-----+
| id|value|value|
+---+-----+-----+
|  1|   A1| null|
|  2|   A2| null|
|  3|   A3|   A3|
|  4|   A4|   A4|
|  4|   A4| A4_1|
|  5| null|   A5|
|  6| null|   A6|
+---+-----+-----+

FULL_OUTER JOIN
+---+-----+-----+
| id|value|value|
+---+-----+-----+
|  1|   A1| null|
|  2|   A2| null|
|  3|   A3|   A3|
|  4|   A4|   A4|
|  4|   A4| A4_1|
|  5| null|   A5|
|  6| null|   A6|
+---+-----+-----+

LEFT JOIN
+---+-----+-----+
| id|value|value|
+---+-----+-----+
|  1|   A1| null|
|  2|   A2| null|
|  3|   A3|   A3|
|  4|   A4| A4_1|
|  4|   A4|   A4|
+---+-----+-----+

LEFT_OUTER JOIN
+---+-----+-----+
| id|value|value|
+---+-----+-----+
|  1|   A1| null|
|  2|   A2| null|
|  3|   A3|   A3|
|  4|   A4| A4_1|
|  4|   A4|   A4|
+---+-----+-----+

RIGHT JOIN
+---+-----+-----+
| id|value|value|
+---+-----+-----+
|  3|   A3|   A3|
|  4|   A4| A4_1|
|  4|   A4|   A4|
|  5| null|   A5|
|  6| null|   A6|
+---+-----+-----+

RIGHT_OUTER JOIN
+---+-----+-----+
| id|value|value|
+---+-----+-----+
|  3|   A3|   A3|
|  4|   A4|   A4|
|  4|   A4| A4_1|
|  5| null|   A5|
|  6| null|   A6|
+---+-----+-----+

LEFT_SEMI JOIN
+---+-----+
| id|value|
+---+-----+
|  3|   A3|
|  4|   A4|
+---+-----+

LEFT_ANTI JOIN
+---+-----+
| id|value|
+---+-----+
|  1|   A1|
|  2|   A2|
+---+-----+