SQL is such a wonderful language and one question I get from people that I talk with is what is the difference between Outer and Inner Joins. Before we talk about that lets talk about what a Join is. A join is used to compare and combine — literally join — and return specific rows of data from two or more tables in a database. It really is that simple. Now an inner join finds and returns matching data from tables, while an outer join finds and returns matching data and some dissimilar data from tables.
Inner Join
An inner join targets on the commonality between two tables. When using an inner join, there must be at least some matching data between two (or more) tables that are being compared. An inner join searches tables for matching or overlapping data. Upon finding it, the inner join combines and returns the information into one new table.
Outer Join
An outer join returns a set of records (or rows) that include what an inner join would return but also includes other rows for which no corresponding match is found in the other table.
There are three types of outer joins:
- Left Outer Join (or Left Join) – returns only unmatched rows from the left table.
- Right Outer Join (or Right Join) – returns only unmatched rows from the right table.
- Full Outer Join (or Full Join) – returns unmatched rows from both tables.
Each of these outer joins refers to the part of the data that is being compared, combined, and returned. Sometimes nulls will be produced in this process as some data is shared while other data is not.
To see examples of LEFT OUTER and RIGHT OUTER JOINS look back at this blog RIGHT JOIN and LEFT JOIN.