Question

using: sql server

Here is what I am trying to accomplish. I have two tables one with 70 companies (company info, etc) and one table recording the incident numbers of those companies.

I like my sql result to return every company name whether a match is found or not. I thought an outer join will help, but it looks like my where clause is preventing this from happening:

I have tried full join, outerjoin, left join, same results …..

====> However if i remove the where clause then I get all companies names.

SELECT count(*) AS total_num, TS_NAME
FROM TTS_INCIDENTS RIGHT OUTER JOIN TS_COMPANIES
ON TS_COMPANIES.TS_ID=TTS_INCIDENTS.TS_COMPANYID
WHERE TS_ACTIVEINACTIVE = 0 AND (TS_INCIDENTTYPE=10 OR TS_INCIDENTTYPE=11)
GROUP BY TS_NAME
ORDER BY TS_NAME

Thanks
Bruce

Answer 1

Even if I don’t know which relation holds which columns in your example, I’m pretty sure you actually want to do this:

FROM TS_COMPANIES LEFT OUTER JOIN TTS_INCIDENTS
  ON TS_COMPANIES.TS_ID = TTS_INCIDENTS.TS_COMPANYID
 AND TS_ACTIVEINACTIVE = 0 
 AND (TS_INCIDENTTYPE = 10 OR TS_INCIDENTTYPE = 11)

i.e. select from companies and left outer join incidents to the companies, using the incident predicates as left outer join criteria, not as select criteria.

Note, in most RDBMS, a RIGHT OUTER JOIN usually has a heavy performance impact and should be avoided if possible (don’t remember where I’ve read this. Might be an outdated fact).