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FULL OUTER JOIN vs. FULL JOIN

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?

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Answer

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.

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