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A commitment to SQL code containing inner joins assumes NULL join columns will not be introduced by future changes, including vendor updates, design changes and bulk processing outside of the application's data validation rules such as data conversions, migrations, bulk imports and merges.
The SQL COALESCE function or CASE expressions can be used to "simulate" Null equality in join criteria, and the IS NULL and IS NOT NULL predicates can be used in the join criteria as well. The following predicate tests for equality of the values A and B and treats Nulls as being equal.
Outer joins are not considered part of the classical relational algebra discussed so far. [5] The operators defined in this section assume the existence of a null value, ω, which we do not define, to be used for the fill values; in practice this corresponds to the NULL in SQL.
The join operation defined for relational databases is often referred to as a natural join (⋈). In this type of join, two relations are connected by their common attributes. MySQL's approximation of a natural join is the Inner join operator. In SQL, an INNER JOIN prevents a cartesian product from occurring when there are two tables in a query.
The following table lists the standard-conforming values - based on SQL:2011. [1] The table's last column shows the part of the standard that defines the row. If it is empty, the definition originates from part 2 Foundation .
The concept of Null allows SQL to deal with missing information in the relational model. The word NULL is a reserved keyword in SQL, used to identify the Null special marker. Comparisons with Null, for instance equality (=) in WHERE clauses, results in an Unknown truth value.
The old and new values are exposed as fields of a record data structures called :OLD and :NEW. It is necessary to test the nullity of the fields of the :NEW record that define the primary key (when a DELETE operation is performed), in order to avoid the insertion of a new row with null values in all columns.
For referential integrity to hold in a relational database, any column in a base table that is declared a foreign key can only contain either null values or values from a parent table's primary key or a candidate key. [2] In other words, when a foreign key value is used it must reference a valid, existing primary key in the parent table.