FULL OUTER JOIN vs. FULL JOIN

sql sql-server-2008 tsql join
CptSupermrkt picture CptSupermrkt · Jul 30, 2012 · Viewed 169.1k times · Source

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?

Answer

John Woo picture John Woo · Jul 30, 2012

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.

Related questions

How can I get column names from a table in SQL Server?

I want to query the name of all columns of a table. I found how to do this in: Oracle MySQL PostgreSQL But I also need to know: how can this be done in Microsoft SQL Server (2008 in my case)?

Read More
How can I select the first day of a month in SQL?

I just need to select the first day of the month of a given datetime variable. I know it's quite easy to do using this kind of code: select CAST(CAST(YEAR(@mydate) AS VARCHAR(4)) + '/' + CAST(MONTH(@mydate) …

Read More
SQL Server SELECT INTO @variable?

I have the following code in one of my Sql (2008) Stored Procs which executes perfectly fine: CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[Item_AddItem] @CustomerId uniqueidentifier, @Description nvarchar(100), @Type int, @Username nvarchar(100), AS BEGIN DECLARE @TopRelatedItemId uniqueidentifier; SET @TopRelatedItemId = ( SELECT top(1) RelatedItemId FROM …

Read More