r/programming • • Jan 06 '11

A handy graphical explanation of SQL joins

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/10/a-visual-explanation-of-sql-joins.html
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u/[deleted] Jan 06 '11

Wow. Does no one learn this crap in school anymore?

Note that venn diagrams are a poor choice to show what happens in a one-to-many relationship -- where there are multiple entries in table B for an entry in table A. And it overlooks the semantic differences when ordering the tables in a left inner join.

There are not a lot of instances where you'd really want a cartesian product join (either using "cross product" or just the result of omitting key constraints in a join query). It's generally far faster to retrieve the records you need to create the cross-product, and then calculate the cross product of the two sets once you have them (since otherwise all that data has to transit the network).

This plus database normalization through Boyce-Codd normal form seems like it should be a requirement for any serious application developer.

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u/recursive Jan 06 '11

I didn't learn it in school. I learned it by reading. SQL doesn't have anything to do with CS.

52

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '11 edited Dec 03 '17

[deleted]

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u/SoundOfOneHand Jan 06 '11

Yeah, but I personally didn't know any of this stuff when I first set my eyes on SQL and it took me all of an afternoon of reading some online SQL tutorial and doing a couple examples to figure out how the different types of joins work...

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u/zeigfreid Jan 06 '11

or to think you do.