Computers & ProgrammingBackend DevelopmentSQL

SQL INNER Join

The SQL INNER JOIN keyword returns rows when there is at least one match in both tables. Relational databases are often normalized to eliminate duplication of information when objects may have one-to-many relationships.

For example, a Department may be associated with many different Employees. Joining two tables effectively combines information from both tables to avoid duplication of data in either table.

Employees Table

employeeIDemployeeName
1000John Smith
1001Fred White
1002Jane Scott
1003Samuel Williams

Departments Table

deptNameemployeeID
Sales1000
HR1002
Accounting1003
Operations1004

In this example, employeeID is a primary key in the table called “Employees”. You’ll notice that employeeID also exists in the “Departments” table but as a foreign key. Using SQL Join, we can combine these two tables into one when presenting the results of a query.

Design Example

In this example, using an inner join, we can build a query to display the department name and employee name even though neither table has this information on its own. The two tables are joined by the ’employeeID’ field. We can use the INNER JOIN to bind this data together.

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Syntax

SELECT tableName#.columnName#, etc...
FROM tableName1
INNER JOIN tableName2
ON tableName1.columnName# = tableName2.columnName#

Example

List the departments and their assigned employees.

SELECT Departments.deptName, Employees.employeeName
FROM Employees
INNER JOIN Departments
ON Employees.employeeID = Departments.employeeID

Results

deptNameemployeeName
SalesJohn Smith
HRJane Scott
AccountingSamuel Williams

You should immediately notice that ‘Operations’ from the Department table and ‘Fred White’ from the Employees table are not included in the results. This is because there is there are no employees assigned to Operations, and Fred White is not assigned to a valid department ID.

If there are rows in “Departments” that do not have matches in “Employees” and vice versa, those rows will not be listed.

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