outer joins

Hi all,

I'm new to postgre, I've changed my work and consequently now i'm moving
from MS plaform.
In MS SQL there are such constructs left or right outer join, in postgres
there are no such thing

Can You offer me strategy to make query that selects from table (a) and
joins to it another (b)
on e.g. a.id=b.aid but joins so that in case there is no value in table b
NULL is left in result:
in MS SQL i've used query:

select a.id, b.name from a left outer join b on a.id=b.aid

table a          table b

id |             aid | name
-----------      ----------------
1                1   | Tom
2                3   | Sam

result:
a.id  |  b.name
---------------------
1     | Tom
2     | NULL

thank you in advance

Algirdas Šakmanas
IT manager
+370 99 90369
asakmanas@grafton.lt
Grafton Entertainment
http://www.tvnet.lt