Multiple Tables
Expand your SQL skills by creating and manipulating databases with multiple related tables
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Key Concepts
Review core concepts you need to learn to master this subject
Outer Join
Outer Join
SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table1
LEFT JOIN table2
ON table1.column_name = table2.column_name;An outer join will combine rows from different tables even if the join condition is not met. In a LEFT JOIN, every row in the left table is returned in the result set, and if the join condition is not met, then NULL values are used to fill in the columns from the right table.
WITH Clause
WITH Clause
SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table1
LEFT JOIN table2
ON table1.column_name = table2.column_name;The WITH clause stores the result of a query in a temporary table (temporary_movies) using an alias.
Multiple temporary tables can be defined with one instance of the WITH keyword.
UNION Clause
UNION Clause
SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table1
LEFT JOIN table2
ON table1.column_name = table2.column_name;The UNION clause is used to combine results that appear from multiple SELECT statements and filter duplicates.
For example, given a first_names table with a column name containing rows of data “James” and “Hermione”, and a last_names table with a column name containing rows of data “James”, “Hermione” and “Cassidy”, the result of this query would contain three names: “Cassidy”, “James”, and “Hermione”.
CROSS JOIN Clause
CROSS JOIN Clause
SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table1
LEFT JOIN table2
ON table1.column_name = table2.column_name;The CROSS JOIN clause is used to combine each row from one table with each row from another in the result set. This JOIN is helpful for creating all possible combinations for the records (rows) in two tables.
The given query will select the shirt_color and pants_color columns from the result set, which will contain all combinations of combining the rows in the shirts and pants tables. If there are 3 different shirt colors in the shirts table and 5 different pants colors in the pants table then the result set will contain 3 x 5 = 15 rows.
Foreign Key
Foreign Key
SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table1
LEFT JOIN table2
ON table1.column_name = table2.column_name;A foreign key is a reference in one table’s records to the primary key of another table. To maintain multiple records for a specific row, the use of foreign key plays a vital role. For instance, to track all the orders of a specific customer, the table order (illustrated at the bottom of the image) can contain a foreign key.
Primary Key
Primary Key
SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table1
LEFT JOIN table2
ON table1.column_name = table2.column_name;A primary key column in a SQL table is used to uniquely identify each record in that table. A primary key cannot be NULL. In the example, customer_id is the primary key. The same value cannot re-occur in a primary key column. Primary keys are often used in JOIN operations.
Inner Join
Inner Join
SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table1
LEFT JOIN table2
ON table1.column_name = table2.column_name;The JOIN clause allows for the return of results from more than one table by joining them together with other results based on common column values specified using an ON clause. INNER JOIN is the default JOIN and it will only return results matching the condition specified by ON.
- 1In order to efficiently store data, we often spread related information across multiple tables. For instance, imagine that we’re running a magazine company where users can have different types of …
- 2Let’s return to our magazine company. Suppose we have the three tables described in the previous exercise – shown in the browser on the right (we are going to try something new!): - orders - subsc…
- 3Combining tables manually is time-consuming. Luckily, SQL gives us an easy sequence for this: it’s called a JOIN. If we want to combine orders and customers, we would type: SELECT * FROM orders JO…
- 4Let’s revisit how we joined orders and customers. For every possible value of customer_id in orders, there was a corresponding row of customers with the same customer_id. What if that wasn’t true…
- 5What if we want to combine two tables and keep some of the un-matched rows? SQL lets us do this through a command called LEFT JOIN. A left join will keep all rows from the first table, regardles…
- 6Let’s return to our example of the magazine subscriptions. Recall that we had three tables: orders, subscriptions, and customers. Each of these tables has a column that uniquely identifies each ro…
- 7So far, we’ve focused on matching rows that have some information in common. Sometimes, we just want to combine all rows of one table with all rows of another table. For instance, if we had a tab…
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Multiple Tables
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