On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 18:00, Shawn Green (MySQL) <shawn.l.gr...@oracle.com> wrote: > This is a simple misunderstanding. From the page you quote, the syntax > patterns for an OUTER join are these: > > Â | table_reference {LEFT|RIGHT} [OUTER] JOIN table_reference join_condition > > Â | 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). Â 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 -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql?unsub=arch...@jab.org