Question

I’m trying to make a table show it’s full content eventhough there might be some empty cells. The table contains ten possible positions (i.e. chairman, secretary etc) in a small club. Each position refers to a member ID in a member table depending on who has been elected to said position. A position may be vacant and this is what I’m trying to accomplish. The structure (simplified) is as follows:

Table “members”

CREATE TABLE members (
    id_member INT NOT NULL,
    member_name VARCHAR(45),
    PRIMARY KEY (id_member));

Table “positions”

CREATE TABLE positions (
    id_position INT NOT NULL,
    position_name VARCHAR(45),
    PRIMARY KEY (id_position)
    FOREIGN KEY (id_member) REFERENCES members(id_member));

Select syntax

SELECT position_name, member_name
FROM members
JOIN positions USING(id_members);

It works very well as long as there is a member on a position but if it’s vacant, that row doesn’t appear. Is there some way to make the table positions always return every row eventhough the column id_member has empty cells?
Desired result:
Chariman – Jack Carver
Secretary – Joe Hill
Accounter – NULL
Webmaster – Joanna Robson

Answer 1

use LEFT JOIN instead and interchange the tableNames

SELECT position_name, member_name
FROM   positions
       LEFT JOIN members USING(id_members);

To fully gain knowledge about joins, kindly visit the link below:

• Visual Representation of SQL Joins