Unlocking the Power of FULL OUTER JOIN in SQL: Performance, Use Cases & Examples
Discover how the FULL OUTER JOIN in SQL can simplify queries, improve performance, and solve real-world data problems
2025-11-10
Outer Joins
Unlocking the Power of FULL OUTER JOIN in SQL: Performance, Use Cases & Examples
The JOIN statement is one of the most common operations SQL developers perform. Yet in a world ruled by Inner and Left Joins, the poor Full Outer Join is like Cinderella before the ball – allowed out on only the rarest of occasions. In an (unscientific) survey I once performed of SQL developers at one Fortune 100 firm, half of the developers had never used a Full Outer Join in production code, and the rest had used it in a tiny handful of occasions.
2025-10-01
2019-12-12
957 reads
Understanding Outer Joins in SQL
The basics of outer joins are shown in this short piece that explains how they work.
2019-11-19
9,648 reads
2015-12-17
1,700 reads
Outer Join – What am I missing (SQL Spackle)
This article shows how to find missing rows in a table using a outer join.
2024-10-18 (first published: 2013-11-12)
24,276 reads
2012-12-27
2,099 reads
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Question of the Day
Lots of FKs
In SQL Server 2025, what are the most outgoing and incoming FK references a table can have?
See possible answers