On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 18:00, Shawn Green (MySQL)
<shawn.l.green@stripped> wrote:
> This is a simple misunderstanding. From the page you quote, the syntax
> patterns for an OUTER join are these:
>
> | table_reference {LEFT|RIGHT} [OUTER] JOIN table_reference join_condition
>
> | table_reference NATURAL [{LEFT|RIGHT} [OUTER]] JOIN table_factor
>
> Notice that in the second, the [OUTER] is nested inside of [{LEFT|RIGHT}
> [OUTER]] and in the first it follows the NON-OPTIONAL choice of
> {LEFT|RIGHT). Neither one of these syntax patterns allows the keyword OUTER
> to appear without either the LEFT or RIGHT keyword before it.
>
> To make this crystal clear those patterns allow LEFT JOIN, RIGHT JOIN, LEFT
> OUTER JOIN, or RIGHT OUTER JOIN but not just OUTER JOIN.
>
Thank you Shawn! I see that I am getting support right from the top!
So far as I understand, an outer join should return all matched and
unmatched rows (essentially all rows) from both tables. So it is not
clear to me what is the difference between a right outer join and a
left outer join, and how they differ from a regular outer join. But
don't answer that, I'll google it and post back for the fine archives.
Thanks!
--
Dotan Cohen
http://gibberish.co.il
http://what-is-what.com
