Sql-server – DISTINCT Query on an INNER JOIN

There is not a "better" or a "worse" join type. They have different meaning and they must be used depending on it.

In your case, you probably do not have employees with no work_log (no rows in that table), so LEFT JOIN and JOIN will be equivalent in results. However, if you had such a thing (a new employee with no registered work_log), a JOIN wold omit that employee, while a left join (whose first table is employees) would show all of them, and nulls on the fields from work_log if there are not matches.

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Again, performance is a secondary thing to query correctness. Some people say that you shouldn't use LEFT JOINs. It is true that a LEFT JOIN forces the optimizer to execute the query in one particular order, preventing some optimizations (table reordering) in some cases. Here is one example. But you should not choose one over the other if correctness/meaning is sacrificed, as an INNER JOIN is not inherently worse. The rest of the usual optimizations apply as usual.

In summary, do not use LEFT JOIN if you really mean INNER JOIN.

In MySQL CROSS JOIN, INNER JOIN and JOIN are the same. In the standard, and semantically, a CROSS JOIN is an INNER JOIN without an ON clause, so you get every combination of rows between tables.

You have examples of all semantic types of join on Wikipedia. In practice, in MySQL, we tend to only write JOIN and LEFT JOIN.

First, join TABLE_2 and TABLE_3 using an inner join and additionally filtering on Value_A = 'a':

SELECT
  t2.ID_1,
  t3.ID_A,
  t3.Value_A
FROM
  TABLE_2 t2
  INNER JOIN TABLE_3 t3 ON t2.ID_A = t3.ID_A
WHERE
  t3.Value_A = 'a'

This will give you the following result set:

ID_1  ID_A  Value_A
----  ----  -------
1     b     a
4     d     a

Now use the above as a derived table and join it, using an outer join this time, to TABLE_1, additionally filtering the results on Value_1 = 11:

SELECT
  t1 .ID_1,
  t23.ID_A,
  t1 .Value_1,
  t23.Value_A
FROM
  TABLE_1 t1
  LEFT JOIN
  (
    SELECT
      t2.ID_1,
      t3.ID_A,
      t3.Value_A
    FROM
      TABLE_2 t2
      INNER JOIN TABLE_3 t3 ON t2.ID_A = t3.ID_A
    WHERE
      t3.Value_A = 'a'
  ) t23 ON t1.ID_1 = t23.ID_1
WHERE
  t1.Value_1 = 11
;

That will give you the output you want:

ID_1  ID_A  Value_1  Value_A
----  ----  -------  -------
1     b     11       a
3     NULL  11       NULL

However, nesting a query is not the only way to solve your problem – you can also use a nested join, which is much more concise:

SELECT
  t1.ID_1,
  t3.ID_A,
  t1.Value_1,
  t3.Value_A
FROM
  TABLE_1 t1
  LEFT JOIN
    TABLE_2 t2
    INNER JOIN TABLE_3 t3 ON t2.ID_A = t3.ID_A AND t3.Value_A = 'a'
  ON t1.ID_1 = t2.ID_1
WHERE
  t1.Value_1 = 11
;

The last query implements exactly the same logic as the previous query: first, tables TABLE_2 and TABLE_3 are joined and the result is filtered, then it is joined to TABLE_1 and the final set is filtered again. Some people also add brackets around a nested join:

FROM
  TABLE_1 t1
  LEFT JOIN
  (
    TABLE_2 t2
    INNER JOIN TABLE_3 t3 ON t2.ID_A = t3.ID_A AND t3.Value_A = 'a'
  )
  ON t1.ID_1 = t2.ID_1

to make it clearer (perhaps both for themselves and for future maintainers) that the nested join takes place before the outer-level one, logically, although the syntax is unambiguous enough without them.

Nevertheless, many people find it confusing even with brackets, and if you find yourself struggling with it as well, there is another option – right outer join:

SELECT
  t1.ID_1,
  t3.ID_A,
  t1.Value_1,
  t3.Value_A
FROM
  TABLE_2 t2
  INNER JOIN TABLE_3 t3 ON t2.ID_A = t3.ID_A AND t3.Value_A = 'a'
  RIGHT JOIN TABLE_1 t1 ON t1.ID_1 = t2.ID_1
WHERE
  t1.Value_1 = 11
;

Again, the logical sequence of events specified by the FROM clause repeats that of the derived table solution: a join between TABLE_2 and TABLE_3, filtered, is followed by a join with TABLE_1. The different syntax does not alter the outcome and the results produced still match your requirements.