Re: Slightly OT: outer joins

>>>>> "Fran" == Fran Fabrizio <ffabrizio@mmrd.com> writes:

Fran> So, within those contraints Randal hit it right on the nose.  I
Fran> was definitely not catching on enough to see that the 'NATURAL'
Fran> option to the joins is an obvious choice, which was part/all of
Fran> my problem.  Thanks Randal and everyone!

[..]

>> test=# select * from people natural left join color natural left join food;

Well, even without the natural part of the join, let's presume
that people.id needed to be matched to color.people_id,
you could say that as:

select id, fname, lname, color, favorite_food from
  people
  left join color on people.id = color.people_id
  left join food on people.id = food.people_id

So the main clue wasn't the NATURAL, it was the LEFT JOIN, to give you
the nulls for the table rows that didn't match.

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